Evangelical women from the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. are publicly voicing their dismay over an influential leader\u2019s \u201cinappropriate\u201d statements about domestic violence and women\u2019s bodies.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of women who attend churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention have signed a petition calling for \u201cdecisive action\u201d in response to \u201cdamaging, sinful\u201d comments made by Dr. Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and a prominent SBC leader.<\/p>\n
The open letter, addressed to the seminary\u2019s board of trustees, asks them to take a strong stand against \u201cunbiblical teaching regarding womanhood, sexuality, and domestic violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is watching us all, brothers. They wonder how we could possibly be part of a denomination that counts Dr. Patterson as a leader,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cThe Southern Baptist Convention cannot allow the biblical view of leadership to be misused in such a way that a leader with an unbiblical view of authority, womanhood, and sexuality be allowed to continue in leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patterson has recently come under scrutiny after a 2000 audio clip resurfaced online in which he advised physically abused wives to stay in abusive relationships, \u201cbe submissive in every way\u201d and try as hard as possible not to get divorced. He clarified early last week that at times, he has counseled abused women to leave \u2015 albeit not divorce \u2015 their husbands and report what was happening to the police. However, he said he still thinks that in cases of \u201cnon-injurious\u201d abuse, women might choose to \u201cpray through\u201d the situation rather than leave their husbands. <\/p>\n
HuffPost\u2019s requests for comment from Patterson and the seminary were not returned. But on Friday, Patterson told The Washington Post that he couldn\u2019t \u201capologize for what I didn\u2019t do wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some evangelicals\u2019 overly broad reading of wives\u2019 duty to submit to their husbands, coupled with the belief that divorce should be avoided at all costs, produces a \u201cpotent and literally deadly\u201d combination that leads many women to keep enduring abuse, Katelyn Beaty, an editor-at-large at Christianity Today, told HuffPost last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt leads pastors like Paige Patterson to justify or excuse domestic violence or to see it as the price of a godly marriage,\u201d Beaty wrote in an email. \u201cThis is a gross departure from the biblical text as well as a grave departure from the pastor\u2019s call to shepherd his members.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evangelical women from the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. are publicly voicing their dismay over an influential leader\u2019s \u201cinappropriate\u201d statements about domestic violence and women\u2019s bodies. Hundreds of women who attend churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention have signed a petition calling for \u201cdecisive action\u201d in response to \u201cdamaging, sinful\u201d comments made by … Continue reading “Evangelical Women Are Condemning A Southern Baptist Leader\u2019s \u2018Sinful\u2019 Remarks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communities","tag-paige-patterson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ampforwp.com\/demo\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}