Wednesday, June 10, 1998

Southern Baptists misapply women

By Bonnie Erbe

Southern Baptist (and other) women unite! If ever there were a rallying cry for women of one faith to teach a lesson to their menfolk, it comes this week at the Southern Baptists' annual convention in (of all places) Salt Lake City.

The Baptist Faith and Message -- the church's declaration of beliefs -- is probably going to be amended at the convention to include a statement on marriage and family that reads, in part" "A husband has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect and to lead his family," while "a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

It goes on to says the wife has "the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his 'helper' in managing her household and nurturing the next generation."

With all due respect to Southern Baptists, they are clearly not the only religious group to treat women in a subservient manner. And there probably are plenty of Southern Baptist women who fall for the idealized vision of a protective husband and a sheltered, home and child-centered existence. But that said, this amendment is so degrading and atavistic that it is hard to believe even a group of male devotees could suggest its approval in 1998. Where have these people been hiding for the last 35 years?

Church leaders (all men, of course) say the amendment is necessary because challenges to the structure of the family over the last 50 years have come so fast and furiously as to threaten annihilation of the basic family unit. The amendment's purpose is to reject one-parent families, divorce, same-sex couples and everyone else who does not submit to modern warped interpretations of ancient Biblical Scriptures.

Besides, if we were to revert to the time of 50 years ago which church leaders hold so dear, we must remember that wife-beating was not only legal, it was routinely overlooked by police as a private family matter. Women were habitually denied equal access to jobs and education (as were male minorities). White males ruled supreme and everyone else was out of luck. Is this the America the Southern Baptists want to return to? It seems so.

Luckily, Southern Baptists far from unanimously support the amendment. Disagreement is rampant within the progressive wing of the faith. And some even call it a sop to the Christian Coalition, whose leader, James Dobson, is addressing the convention in Salt Lake City. The Rev. James Dunn, executive director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, a coalition that promotes religious liberty, criticized the amendment. He told the Washington Post it contains "not a hint of mutual submission," which he calls critical to successful marriages.

The Rev. Virginia Swaim White of Arlington, Va., told the Post the Baptists' concept of wifely submission is "not quite the way I interpret the Scriptures." She has abandoned the annual Conventions due to the leadership's "right-wing" drift and "rigid" nature, which she says many Baptists avoid because the "spirit of love and concern we felt earlier" no longer exists among church hierarchy.

If the convention wishes to become a very small and select group, it can continue along the path it has chosen. If it wishes to re-integrate wise women (and men) such as Swaim White, it will broaden its extremely narrow views.

Bonnie Erbe is host of the PBS program "To the Contrary." E-mail her at 102404.3317@CompuServe.com.

Scripps Howard News Service