What a hoot! Southern Baptists are having to defend themselves against the accusation that they are becoming feminists.
What have they done to deserve this f-word?
They have kicked out the president of a seminary for counseling victims of domestic violence to keep quiet and for telling at least one rape victim to forgive her assailant and not report to the police. They have also dethroned a few other predator pastors and confessed to past failures to protect the weak.
This counts as feminism?
I'd call it simple justice regardless of gender--which by the way, actually is the definition of feminism. Look it up in any dictionary.
Apparently any stance of justice for any woman or women puts a complementarian in dangerous territory. There must be some no man's land encircling the hot heart of feminism, and if a pastor or entire denomination enters this zone, that person or group can be branded with the scarlet F.
The genesis of this latest skirmish in the culture wars is an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Margaret Bendroth, a scholar with the Congregational Library and Archives in Boston.
"Could Southern Baptists Actually Become Feminists?" she asked on June21.
"I think the answer to that questions [sic] is a resounding 'no'" replied blogger Denny Burk in The Aquila Report on June 30.
