bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog

I am going to jump right in and talk about the elephant in the room—homosexuality. I just read this article by Dr. Al Mohler Jr “The train is leaving the station, Andy Stanley’s departure from Biblical Christianity.” In this article, he blasts Rev. Andy Stanley’s decision to welcome LGBTQ+ Christians into his church. Mohler, of course, is horrified and tries to justify his horrification by scripture.

Dr. Mohler, the beef you have is not with homosexuals. You already have LGBTQ+ in your church. What you are really afraid of is that when Christians open their hearts to homosexuals, it will cause them to also open their hearts to women preachers.

The Apostle Paul did not say, “I do not permit a woman to speak, because if she does, your next pastor will be a lesbian.” But he may as well have said that, according to the irrational fears pastors have presented to congregations.

Years ago, I heard about subliminal messages in magazines and advertisements. In fact, a review of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies shows that subliminal stimuli activate specific regions of the brain despite participants being unaware (Wikipedia).  So, yes, I am sure that messages get across to our brains without us consciously being aware of it. That is what has happened with women’s equality being equated with homosexuality.

They want us to connect the two and we do.

They cannot, and will not, tolerate women preachers. So Fundamentalists tell us that churches will be full of homosexuals if they allow women as pastors. They lead us to believe that any woman who feels called to preach is a homosexual. They tell us that when a woman wants to pastor a church it is because she wants to be “a man.” So with that unfounded reasoning, they tell us that both the pulpits and the pews will be filled up with homosexuals if women are allowed to preach. Fundamentalists have bound equality to homosexuality, and perhaps the majority has bought into it as well.

There are a handful of religious denominations that accept women as equals, but, ultimately, they have become the stumbling block against women pastors instead of being the standard. The reason is that these churches that have accepted women as pastors have also recognized that within their congregations there likely are homosexuals.

Fundamentalists have engaged in a rock-throwing battle against homosexuals. They spread emails, facebook posts, and promote any and every pastor who has a bad word to say against homosexuals.

Personally, I have never encountered a homosexual woman pastor. But I have heard of, met, and encountered male pastors who are homosexuals, adulterers, pedophiles, wife beaters, murderers, abusers, and sexual deviants. No church will say that because some men are guilty of these things, we should deny all men from service in the church. But that is what they say about women pastors—that some might be homosexuals, so no woman can be a pastor.

A rational person will tell you that the Bible shows absolutely no connection between women and homosexuality, whether they are being allowed to serve God fully in the church or not. However, those who oppose equality will tell you that they do not want a woman preacher, because churches that have women preachers have opened their hearts to accept homosexuality.

But look at the Catholic Church. They do not accept women as priests, and yet we have been made aware that there are numerous priests who are homosexual and many others are pedophiles. What is the connection there? They officially do not accept homosexuality, however, they are beset by male homosexual priests and priest child molesters. The natural conclusion is that if the Catholic Church accepted women as priests, they would have fewer homosexuals and child molesters.

There is no connection between homosexuality and women pastors, but subliminally we think that if we accept women pastors, we will officially endorse homosexuality. That doesn’t make sense. It is not scriptural. But let’s go on with the comparison with evangelicals and Catholics.

Is it just Protestant denominations that accept women as pastors that will have some pastors who are lesbians? Why does that reasoning apply only to women? Why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to men and make it a possibility that some of our male pastors would be homosexuals. In other words, if you allow women to preach, and it opens the doors to women homosexual preachers, wouldn’t it stand to reason that because we allow men to preach, it would also open the door to male homosexual preachers?

They cannot make that connection, because if they did, there would be NO pastors.

The subliminal message is that once we open our hearts to women pastors, we will also open our hearts to homosexuality. And that is the whole crux of the matter. They believe that we cannot open our hearts to homosexuals.

“Hate the sin, but love the sinner” applies only to homosexuals. The word that enters our brain first is hate. We actually hate the sinner. We forbid women to preach by tagging women with homosexuality, we wage wars against homosexuals, we send out emails, we tell them they are going to hell, and in all ways show a hateful attitude. The love part of that little ditty gets lost.

You can thank the Southern Baptist Convention for propagating the connection with women pastors and homosexuality. In order to purify the Southern Baptist Convention of homosexuals and women pastors, they set about disfellowshipping churches because they were impure according to the gospel of the SBC. The only churches they disfellowship are churches they believe are soft on homosexuality and/or have women pastors. They do not disfellowship churches where a male pastor has been found to be homosexual, or an adulterer, or a pedophile.

Women’s place in early church days was based on the fact that they were women, and was not linked in any way to homosexuality.

With fundamentalists and complementarians so strong against women these days, I predict that the rights of gays and lesbians will be recognized in the churches long before the rights of women and will be the catalyst that finally gives women equality in the church and home. Same-sex marriages will become common, as the Supreme Court made it legal for same-sex men and women to marry on June 26, 2015. The people in the pews will begin to accept homosexuality (like they are doing now with black/white marriages). Once homosexuality is accepted, fundamental churches will have no legs to stand on, and women pastors and deacons will finally be accepted.

I am not advocating for or against homosexuality. My advocacy is for Christian women’s equality. I am just saying that the real message here is just the opposite of what we are being told. The real message is that once we open our hearts to homosexuals, we will also open our hearts to women pastors—not the other way around.

Do you know why we will not be successful before then? We will not win because we are not hungry enough. We do not fight for it. Oh, we discuss it. But we are not hungry enough. We do not fight for equality. Our female forebears fought for equality, but we do not have a clue, or the courage, to fight this injustice in churches.

“’Gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan getting out of hand” by the Washington Post was the guest editorial in my local paper Friday, September 8, 2023. They said, “An August 30 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says that the majority of the 100 religious edicts issued by the de facto government since August 30 directly enforce severe restrictions on women and girls.” Now girls are flogged for leaving their house and going to school.

Before you shake your head at this and wonder how they can do it, I will tell you. Their religion tells them so. Just as most Christian religions today tell women they are to submit. Just as The Gospel Coalition tells women they must submit; just as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood tells women they must submit; just as the Keller Center tells women they must submit; just as the Southern Baptist Convention tells women they must submit; just as many churches, institutions, seminaries, books, podcasts, blogs tell women they must submit.

The Bible tells men and women they are to submit to each other. That means no little-gods in control.

Let me tell what happened to me so you can see this in practice. I have told this story before.

This is what I wrote in 2016 and it is as true today as it was then.

If she had worn a scarf on her head, I would have expected the words that came out of her mouth. But she was a Christian, young and beautiful, working in a Christian bookstore.

I had stopped by a few months previous and left my book Dethroning Male Headship: Second Edition for them to sell and take the proceeds. I wasn’t asking anything from the sale. So I stopped by to see if the book had sold. Of course I knew they would not even attempt to sell my book, or even read it. Which is exactly what the young woman admitted to.

She said she could not get past the first few pages. I can see why. The first few pages explain the vast difference between egalitarian and complementarian beliefs. The complementarian view is so ingrained in her young life that she could not in good conscience even read that she might be wrong.

I suspect my book appeared as the serpent in the Garden of Eden to her. Unlike Eve, she would not be tempted.

You are either equal or you are not. She had chosen to believe that she was not. She had also chosen to believe that the Bible says so.

I was amazed and astounded at the conversation. I could not believe that young women are so willing to swallow complementarianism and its full expression of female submission to all males.

She quoted Timothy and Titus and said that women are to be the housekeepers. I pointed out that she was working, and she said that women could work but still were to be the housekeepers. Then she said that women were not to have careers. I asked her “what is a career?” I have been a secretary for over 35 years and she is working in a bookstore. Are those careers? She said that a career was where you could “climb the ladder” to a higher job. I laughed and told her that I suppose both she and I could climb the ladder. She could aspire to own the bookstore where she worked, and I could have been (it’s a little late for that now) like Carly Fiorina who began as a secretary and was a presidential candidate in 2016.

Where is this young woman going? She has been told that she cannot have a career (and who decides what a career is?) and she has been told that all males are superior to her. Even though she is still single, she has been led to believe that her husband will support her because the Bible says men are to provide the bread for the family. She has been led to believe that she can work outside the home if she has to, but that in doing so, she is working outside the will of God.

She said “God created sex” which will make this young woman inclined to believe anything she reads by Timothy Keller (a section called “Glory of Sex” – in his book Real Marriage of which they have two copies in their bookstore), Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, Jr., (Fifty Shades of They), and a myriad of other sex preachers. She will believe Beth Moore when she says that women tempt men today like the devil tempted Eve (When godly people do ungodly things), which was the way of thinking that began the witch hunts and resulted in women being burned as witches because “women listen to the devil.”

The serpent said “you will be like God” and now it is men who have chosen to be like God, and they teach that all females are to bow down in submission before all males. Jesus does not teach that God has given males the right to have females bow down before them.

Complementarians never quote Jesus when pushing their theology. Paige Patterson and his wife Dorothy Patterson, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Mary Kassain, and all others who began this complementarian indoctrination of our young men and women in church, and those who continue to teach it, owe all Christians, and society, an apology for their abomination of the gospel.

There are two words you need to remember when discussing female equality:

Complementarian: the religious belief and lifestyle that women are of equal worth, but must submit to all men at all times, in church and in their own home. It is also called patriarchy.

Egalitarian: the religious belief and lifestyle that women are equal – no buts. This is the belief that I subscribe to – there are no buts!

http://www.shirleytaylor.net

Books: Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood; Dethroning Male Headship; Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source; The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist. Available on Amazon in print or kindle. http://www.amazon.com/author/taylorshirley