Well, Melinda, there is no one I enjoy more hanging out at the Feelings thread than people who are sometimes confused, and are sweet, modest, and giggly about it. It really mellows the place out. I like your feminine energy, too. There are always a lot more men than women here, even though I know we try harder! ;^)
Incidentally, did anyone on earth miss this news from the Baptist convention? I spent yesterday watching Baptist ministers defending it on CNN and MSNBC. Why is it that Jerry Falwell always has a smirk on his face, incidentally? He makes me nervous!! And did you know that somewhere in the world, four brand new Southern Baptist churches open for business every day? This religion is growing very rapidly.
Baptists Say Wives Must Submit
New code also opposes gay rights
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Wednesday, June 10, 1998
Leaders of the nation's largest Protestant church
approved a new statement on the family yesterday
that says wives must live in submission to their
husbands and that condemns homosexuality as
''perversion.''
The new statement, the first amendment to the
Baptist Faith and Message statement since 1963,
was passed at a national assembly of the 16
million-member Southern Baptist Convention being
held in Salt Lake City.
Citing numerous Bible verses, the report concludes
that ''the wife is to respond to her husband's loving
headship with honor and respect.''
''As the wife submits herself to her husband's
leadership, the husband humbles himself to meet his
wife's needs for love and nurture,'' it states.
''Wives, on the other hand, were created to be
'helpers' to their husbands. A wife's submission to
her husband does not decrease her worth but
rather enhances her value to her husband and to the
Lord.''
'ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN'
The statement also defines marriage as ''the
exclusive, permanent, monogamous union of one
man and one woman.''
In addition, it contains a strong condemnation of
gay rights. ''Believers must resist any claims of
legitimacy for sexual relationships that biblically
have been declared illicit or perverse,'' it reads.
''The perversion of homosexuality defies even
childbirth, since it negates natural conception.''
Two women served on the seven-member
committee that wrote the statement, including
Dorothy Patterson, wife of Paige Patterson,
president of Southeastern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
Paige Patterson, one of the prime architects of a
fundamentalist takeover of Southern Baptist
seminaries and other church agencies during the
1980s, was elected yesterday in Salt Lake City as
the new president of the increasingly conservative
denomination.
In an interview with Associated Baptist Press,
Dorothy Patterson said the church must go back to
''what God says about the family,'' especially at a
time when ''the family is under assault and attack
from every quarter.''
More moderate Southern Baptists expressed
concern about the new statement on the family.
Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of 19th Avenue
Baptist Church in San Francisco, said it envisions
''a very narrow view of women's contribution to
the world.''
''Some people interpret the Bible differently when
it comes to men and women,'' she said. ''I believe
the Bible makes a good case for mutual submission
of women and men.''
Pennington-Russell has been a trailblazer in
women's rights in the Southern Baptist church,
where female pastors are exceedingly rare.
Next month, she leaves her 90-member San
Francisco congregation, where she has served for
14 years, to become pastor of the 300-member
Calvary Southern Baptist Church in Waco, Texas.
The appointment will make Pennington-Russell the
first female senior pastor of a Southern Baptist
church in Texas history.
Last Sunday, she got a preview of San
Francisco-to-Waco culture shock when an
ultra-fundamentalist sect picketed the Waco
church.
About 30 members of God Said Ministries waved
placards with such messages as ''Women Have
No Authority'' and ''Working Mothers Equal Child
Abuse.''
W.N. Otwell, pastor of the Texas group, said in a
statement that the Waco church's decision to hire a
female pastor was a ''crime against God, the home,
the husband, the children and society as a whole.''
''We hold Calvary Baptist responsible, along with
the feminists, as the main cause of child abuse,
abortion, domestic violence, divorce, teen
pregnancies, drug and alcohol abuse, pornography,
teen crime, gang violence, racial tensions and the
ever-increasing coming out of the closet of the
sodomites and lesbians,'' Otwell proclaimed.
To which Pennington-Russell replied, ''I was
surprised he left out global warming.''
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