Southern Baptist Convention moves to strike women from holding leadership roles in its churches

[oscash]

My Mother always said she was High Church of England. My Father was Catholic. When they married it was in St. Thomas Catholic Church. Father was a very strict Catholic but Mother never attended a Church. We were all brought up as Catholics and regularly attended Mass every Sunday and Holy days. When we all eventually left home, Mother started to go to Father's Church. She said the hymns were very similar. When my Mother passed away, I spoke with the priest in the Church, I said my Mother wasn't a Catholic. He said, "We won't hold that against her", and her funeral was held in the Catholic Church. My Father always said our Mother was a better Christian than he could ever be. They are both buried together in the Catholic section of the cemetery.

 

[Warrigal]

Ahah - I once worked for a covent order in Oz - and attended their sunday service a/m - I was NOT permitted to take part in the eucharist and a male priest officiated - later one of the nuns sang a solo psalm most heavenly. However at one point a new priest arrived and on hearing they weren;t offering me the bread and wine - he took things into his own hands and waved me to come forward and partake - a kindly soul!

I worked in a Catholic school run the by the Brown Josephites.

The local priests who officiated at school or staff masses did not (knowingly) include non catholics in the eucharist but at other times the nuns would invite an order priest who included everyone present who wanted to participate.

I loved the Brown Joeys. They were very enlightened women.

 

[Old Salt]

I once attended C of C in Oz - I believe they had affliations with the Usa versions - I played my saxaphone regularly in the church band ; ssomeone had guitar and another a trumpet - did we play up a storm. And sometimes the gifted females got up to sing ??

Talk about singing: after my daughter moved to a more conservative area of New Brunswick she sang in a Baptist Church for a few months until the Pastor preached about how women were to be silent in Church! She asked, "don't you think singing is preaching as well, except that it is set to a tune?" She stopped going to church!

 

[Been There]

Some people and groups stay in the past and (maybe) are afraid of the future? They don't want to let go for fear of losing that hold on "their" beliefs. Just look at what happened recently to the Methodists.

 

[Della]

"…{M}any religious groups really don’t worship God, they worship the scriptures…Even though {one of} the commandment{s} says, 'You shall have no other God before me,' the Scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God’s actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old {the rock} is, {some} still choose to believe the Scripture. "
~~from The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper

How else are they expected to know God but through the scriptures? Yes we see his works in nature, but that doesn't help us much in figuring out how to live our lives. For that we look to what Jesus taught while he was on earth as recorded in the scriptures.

Occasionally someone, usually a man, will say he has heard directly from God something that is contrary to the scriptures, and before you know it all the men in their church will be allowed to take multiple wives.

The creation stories in the Old Testament are not important. Scientists make too much of those stories, Christians realize that "day" refers to era and marvel at how close the old stories were to what science has discovered today. Science is not infallible, what it states as fact in one century is discovered to be wrong in the next. and nature follows a brutal, "might makes right," code that humans should try to rise above.

The Church has always been in danger of following conventional wisdom of the day rather than the teachings of Jesus. Society constantly pulls against Christian teachings with all the new societal standards glorified in movies and television and any balking against what all the cool kids are doing is declared to be "hateful," and behind the times. Of course it's behind the times, it's 2000 years old, it doesn't want to be fashionable.

There are millions more people following the Kardashians than following Jesus so the non-Christian has nothing to worry about and shouldn't get their knickers in a twist over what the Southern Baptists are doing. After all we've got Gay Pride month going on right now, when was the last time you saw a Christian parade down main street in America?

I, myself, am a liberal Christian, I'm a member of a Lutheran/Episcopal church with a lesbian bishop, but I have total respect for the denominations that have elected to try to stick more closely to the literal words of the New Testament. They're holding to a standard against enormous popular opinion. Anyone who doesn't agree with them is welcome to join the comfortable majority.

 

[Warrigal]

Some people and groups stay in the past and (maybe) are afraid of the future? They don't want to let go for fear of losing that hold on "their" beliefs. Just look at what happened recently to the Methodists.

What happened to the Methodists?

 

[Alligatorob]

My first wife was Mormon. I didn't learn all their secrets because we didn't marry in the temple and I didn't get baptized or even attend, but I know the basics, which is the most that most of their members know.

But as to gender "inequality" in religion, it's plain all over the Bible that women are not equal to men. Women's role and purpose is clear throughout. And some scriptures recommend a few very severe punishments for women who don't obey the rules. You can kill them for that, and everybody's cool with it.

It is true that the Bible is in many ways a book of its day. It was written in a brutal time when women had few rights and slavery was common. We have managed to look past much of what the Bible says about things like slavery and killing, I think many churches are figuring out how to treat women as more equal also. For some reason treatment of women isn't moving as fast.

You know in small town Utah people like your ex (I am guessing) are sometimes called "California Mormons", seen as somehow less Mormon. Marrying a non-Mormon is evidence of that. When I was a student at Utah State I had a couple of Mormon friends from California. Whenever someone started complaining about the Mormons they would often join in with more complaints about the local Utah Mormons than the non-Mormons. It was as much or more about the culture than the religion.

 

[Murrmurr]

You know in small town Utah people like your ex (I am guessing) are sometimes called "California Mormons", seen as somehow less Mormon. Marrying a non-Mormon is evidence of that. When I was a student at Utah State I had a couple of Mormon friends from California. Whenever someone started complaining about the Mormons they would often join in with more complaints about the local Utah Mormons than the non-Mormons. It was as much or more about the culture than the religion.

That's true. I never looked at it that way before. There are several offshoots of the Mormon church, each one accusing the "main one" and each other of not sticking to the Doctrine, not living the real Mormon way, and whatever.

I'm Atheist, but when my kids were little I read the Bible to them every Saturday and the Doctrine & Convenance on Sundays. I made this kind of special by doing it at our local library, which I think helped keep their attention. I prefaced all this reading as "Some people believe..." and "the Catholics believe..." and "This is not my particular belief, but...". In a matter-of-fact way. Like I wasn't mocking religion, I was just teaching it (as well as I could).

Well, my oldest son started attending a Mormon church near where we lived when he was 12, and was baptized Mormon when he was 13. Their mom had died by then, but he knew she was Mormon, and his dentist was a Mormon Bishop, so I assume that's why. Anyway, we all attended his baptism, and I had a luncheon in his honor afterward ...at home. My parents and my grandmother came, and I think my brother and his family came, too.

My point is, I honored Grant's decision, and he conducted himself according to his beliefs all through his teens, but when he was around 22-23, after a year-long stint in Saudi Arabia (as a Sea-Bee), he started researching the history of religions and religion in general, and he really got into it. He is now Atheist. But he taught his kids about religion the way I taught him, except he includes what he found during his years of research.

Not sure why I went rambling off about all that, but there it is.

 

[Alligatorob]

@Murrmurr I think you did a good thing teaching your kids about religion. Religion is an important part of our history and culture, understanding it is important, believer or not.

Not sure why I went rambling off about all that, but there it is.

Nothing wrong with rambling here, makes the place more interesting.