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.
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.
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.
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.
