“Oh! So you’re polite in your oppression of women…”

They, of course, attend the church of my childhood and youth. He wanted me to meet the minister where they attend in an attempt to get us to attend there once the move is made.

But the whole conversation was on the level of “I like black people… I really do… Some of my best friends are black.”

The actual quote was something like:

Oh, I think if you ask most people, most of them don’t have problems with women in “leadership roles”… it’s just that let a women speak, pray, lead singing, read scripture, or serve communion might cause a hullabaloo. But, you could certainly talk about it in Sunday School. And, married couples often co-teach classes on marriage. (Now, their youth minister is a woman… but even this, though 20 years ago it wouldn’t‘ve happened because not even a 50 year old woman could teach a 10 year old baptized boy) is just an extension of womanly duties anyway—let the women deal with the kids, we’ve got important things to do, like wear suits and hand out little trays of bread and sour grape juice.

But, what convinced me that I don’t want to go there, though we might visit, is that the elders are big on male spiritual leadership… they think it is important. Pardon my French, but WTF does that mean? And, WhereTF does scripture lay out such a vision? And don’t go to Ephesians because 1) marriage is being used as an allegory for the church and 2) the whole section begins with (though our super cool bibles separate verse 21 from the rest of the chapter) submit ye one to another.

Comments