Evangelicals are having their own #MeToo moment
Source: WaPo, by Michael Gerson
Evangelical Protestantism, thank God, is experiencing its own version of a #MeToo moment.
Paige Patterson — head of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and icon of conservative Baptist belief — is being called out for a story he told in 2000. An abused woman had come to him for counseling. Patterson recommended prayer. Later, the woman returned with two black eyes. In Patterson’s telling: “She said, ‘I hope you’re happy.’ And I said, ‘Yes .?.?. I’m very happy,’?” because the woman’s husband had heard her prayers and come to church the next day.
This, presumably, is Patterson’s version of a happy ending: A wife gets battered, but the church gets a new member. God works in misogynist ways.
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But it was the response of prominent Baptist teacher Beth Moore that laid bare the reality of being a woman in some evangelical circles. In “A Letter to My Brothers,” she recounts decades of being demeaned, dismissed, ignored and patronized by colleagues. “I came face to face,” she says, “with one of the most demoralizing realizations of my adult life: Scripture was not the reason for the colossal disregard and disrespect of women among many of these men. It was only an excuse. Sin was the reason. Ungodliness.”
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As a historical matter, Moore is correct. The authors of the Gospels would have had no incentive to highlight or exaggerate the role of women in the life of Christ, given their relatively low status in the ancient world. But they appear at nearly every decisive moment. Mary willingly accepts a strange calling. An elderly prophetess named Anna welcomes Jesus’ dedication at the Jerusalem temple. Mary and Martha are among his closest friends. Joanna and Susanna gave financial support to his ministry. Mary Magdalene became a loyal disciple. Women accompanied Jesus to the Cross after the men had fled. In the biblical account, women were the first witnesses of the Resurrection.
Fiercely beautiful. A challenge to the chauvinism of his time, and of our own.
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No one can be fully seized by this truth all of the time. Some of us have trouble any of the time. But this is the calling of faith. It is not a form of nostalgia. It is essentially disruptive; an eternal revolution in human affairs. And it requires people to be outraged at every violation of human dignity that crosses their path, including abuse and misogyny in any form.
Read it all at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/evangelicals-are-having-their-own-metoo-moment/2018/05/07/e97be51e-5219-11e8-a551-5b648abe29ef_story.html
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