Mohler, in an essay entitled "Palin and Baptist Theology" says,
Our confession of faith does not speak to the appropriateness of women serving in political office. It does speak to the priority of motherhood and responsibilities in the home, but it does not specify any public role that is closed to women.Parham, in an essay entitled "Palin and Baptist Revisionism" says,
Well, no, the confession of faith doesn't speak literally to women running for office. But when his wife served on the committee that wrote the family statement, neither she nor he spoke up for women working outside the home.Southern Baptists have a long heritage of "only being faithful to the Bible" when the interpretations they are being faithful to reinforce their personal prejudices. Southern Baptists first distinguished themselves this way by defending the legitimacy of slavery.
In fact, when I said in June 1998 that Southern Baptist fundamentalists "hope to make June Cleaver the biblical model for motherhood, despite numerous biblical references to women who worked outside the home," fundamentalists responded with the claim they were only being faithful to the Bible.
Southern Baptists also have a long heritage of reversing their previous positions when it becomes politically expedient. It took them more than 140 years to repudiate their defense of slavery. Now they are repudiating their family statement within a decade. Progress is being made.
Isn't it a bit ironic that the woman they are elevating to national prominence comes from a Christian tradition that recognizes God's call of women to pastoral ministry?
How long will it be until it is politically expedient for Southern Baptists to acknowledge that God calls a lot more women to be pastors than he calls to be politicians?
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It should not be surprising that Mohler got it wrong again on the Bible he claims is INERRANT.
In the pseudo-Pauline letter 1 Timothy, chapter 2, the "good old boy" author insists that EVERYWHERE women are forbidden to exercise authority over any men; they are forbidden to speak in public; they are forbidden to wear expensive clothes, gold, or pearls. There is nothing in this passage to even hint that it applies only in church buildings (which didn't exist when this was written).
When will the Dixie Baptists that Mohler speaks for open up to the role of women in pastoral and prophetic ministry? Likely, when Mohler and his ilk are dead and buried; when the Dixie leaders have outgrown their indefensible doctrine that their Bible is inerrant and is to be taken literally. I would hazard a guess that the later will not happen until we see an even more precipitous decline in their membership--and more importantly, in their giving.
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