Even as they prepare to vote on a formal ban on churches with women pastors, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to boot one such church from its ranks.
Messengers, as voting representatives are known, voted 6,759 to 563 to oust First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a historic Virginia congregation that affirms women can serve in any pastoral role, including as senior pastor. A similar scenario played out at last year’s meeting. Two congregations, including a well-known California megachurch, were ejected from the convention. Ninety-two percent of messengers approved this year’s ouster.
The Virginia congregation has been involved in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination since its 19th century founding and has contributed millions toward denominational causes. But it came under scrutiny after the pastor of a neighboring church reported it to denominational authorities over its having a woman as pastor for children and women.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
-1 Timothy 2:12
This is why I hate the “these aren’t real Christians” no-true-Scotsman dismissals.
The Bible is a toxic book full of misogyny and racism. Sure it has some good stuff in there, but when the founder of Christianity* is so clear about his thoughts on the subjugation of women then these are Christians following the teachings of their religion.
Christianity is only compatible with the modern world when it is so diluted by humanism that it would be unrecognizable by its founder; that’s why reactionaries are working to change the world instead of updating their morality. They want power over people, and enforcing their backwards ideology is their path forward.
* And Paul was the founder of the religion; Jesus didn’t expect the world to last longer than the lives of his disciples
I’m gonna quote Wikipedia on 1 Timothy:
Nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship questioned the authenticity of the letter, with many scholars suggesting that First Timothy, along with Second Timothy and Titus, are not the work of Paul, but of an unidentified Christian writing some time in the late-first to mid-second centuries.[5]. Most scholars now affirm this view.[6][7]
It turns out that most of the NT passages that have been used to repress women use grammar and vocab that suggest they did not actually come from Paul. And in fact they are a hundred years newer than the letters that do appear to be authentically from “Paul”.
And Paul was the founder of the religion; Jesus didn’t expect the world to last longer than the lives of his disciples
Paul expected the world to end too. That’s why he suggested that everyone should be celibate. No point in getting married and having children if the world is just going to end anyway.
That is a great point about pseudopaul. I had forgotten that this letter’s authenticity was questionable.
However there are practically no evangelical groups who would agree with modern scholarship on the subject, so my larger point holds: they believe that Paul instructed women to be subservient and silent.
Also, as far as I can tell, Paul was one of the ones who shifted Jesus’ prophecy about his coming kingdom from that of an imminent apocalypse to a prediction about the rise of the Christian church. While he did believe that the end of the world was near, so do a huge swath of Christians today.
Thanks for the correction, it is appreciated.
I’m not sure about the value of questioning the authenticity of something that has been canon for almost 2000 years. It’s like quibbling about how the Latin translation of the Old Testament doesn’t match Hebrew sources.
Who cares which misogynistic jerk wrote that passage? It’s been part of the bedrock of the faith of countless generations of misogynists since then.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy
Besides, that isn’t even an appeal to tradition, because they aren’t arguing that something is correct because it is traditional, but rather specifying that the tradition is de facto practiced and accepted.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
All I’m saying is that, for Christians, the text of the Bible has been mostly locked down since the Vulgate Bible at around 400 AD. The content is what it is, and is the basis of the faith.
At this point it doesn’t matter if someone mistranslated the Hebrew, misquoted Jesus, made Jesus up entirely, or forged an epistle. It’s been in there for 1600 years and it’s authenticity or accuracy is moot.
Arguing about the origin of 1 Timothy is like arguing about the colour of the wings on the fairies that live at the bottom of the garden. It’s all made up rubbish anyways.
I’m just an ex-Mormon agnostic atheist, and you’re absolutely right, and trying to say that the hardliners are not “Christian” is overlooking a well-established tradition of Christianity being shitty. They are perfectly within “scriptural authority” as they understand it and as their ancestors have understood it.
On the other, there is room in the historical record and scholarship of the Bible as historical text to make a case for an evolving faith that can forge a kinder path, and I think many of the remaining protestants in Europe and “mainline” Chritian churches in America try to to this to one degree or another. Unfortunately, they are all much too content either to humor the fundies, maybe because many in their own congregations would pick that theology if forced to choose explicitly, or else they “No True Scotsman” the hard liners and count themselves done with it.
If you are a Christian who believes that your God is kinder than he is described, then assert that confidently. Make a place in the world. Assert that your Bible is a flawed documentation of an evolving faith tradition. If you can’t do that, and most of them can’t because they fear the Southern Baptist Convention might be right, then you have to live with being conflated with those who think Iron-Age nonsense and cruelty should be the basis for a modern society.
Yeah! Fuck people who want to better themselves in a way I disapprove of!
Do you really think subjugation of women improves these people?
There are plenty of Christians who don’t do that; I have no problem with humanist Christians.
I have a huge problem with reactionaries who use their religion to oppress others. You should learn the difference.
And the United Methodist Church just recently became dis-united, allowing its various divisions to make their own decisions on things like gay marriage. What’s going on with the protestants?
Their numbers are declining, but it’s leaving primarily those who are most psychotically zealous in their commitment to fundamentalism and Christian Dominionism. Those few who don’t toe the line completely are either finding themselves pushed out of their communities, or their communities are having to make adaptations to allow mutually-incompatible views of theology to coexist, to at least temporarily.
gotta hand it to the baptists… they have severe conviction for their form of crazy
Worth mentioning that Southern Baptists and American Baptists are about as similar as Grape Jelly and KY Jelly.
Until you mention holding a sock hop at the local bowling alley.
I think they really do hop and not dance.
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The Alexandria church is currently led by a man, Robert Stephens, but the church has made clear it believes women can serve as senior pastors…
I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of this. The church they kicked out doesn’t have a woman pastor and doesn’t have plans to have a woman pastor. They just said “we think women could be pastors” and that was enough. Jesus Christ, these people.
Christians often claim persecution. They persecuted themselves?
Has it been 30 years already since The Vicar of Dibley aired, after this issue was resolved in the church of england
Great show
It’s not really necessary to be part of the Southern Baptist convention. In fact, it’s not really necessary to be part of any church at all. A person doesn’t have to go to church. There’s no requirement for it and they can live a perfectly moral and meaningful life without ever setting foot in a church.
they can live a perfectly moral and meaningful life without ever setting foot in a church.
Or believing in god at all.
Yeah, only old men can diddle little boys!
Tangent, but I’ve been going down an Alex O’Connor and Esoterica rabbit hole on YouTube, and there are some very interesting things about the historical development of religion and the Judaeo-Christian Bible on those channels that really opened my eyes to how shoddy my education was on these topics. Modern scholarship has come a long way.
Should ask the Pope if he’d be willing to excommunicate them while you’re at it.
They are Protestants. They already are as far as the Pope is concerned (IIRC).
Yes, that was the point of me saying they “should”, it would be equally pointless. I doubt that congregation or any others are going to be positively swayed by this decision.
