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A female Sunday School teacher of 54 years was canned at The First Baptist Church for committing the Sin of - being a woman and speaking. Her demise occured after the church adopted a fundamentalist literal interpretation of the Bible.
On Aug. 9, Mary Lambert recieved a letter explaining that the church no longer had a use for women outside of making cupcakes and babies. Well, it didn't actully say that, but it might as well have. The letter did quote the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."
This disgrace is the result of unchecked fundamentalism run amock. They single out gay people now because it is politically possible. However, let this be a lesson that the extreme right has a broader agenda that includes oppressing the majority of Americans and imposing theocracy.
31 Comments:
Once again, sexist "Christian" men use the teachings of some Biblical figure other than the Christ to justify mistreatment of women (in this case, as in so many others, the Apostle Paul). See if you can divine what the role of women in the Christian church should be from these passages taken from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, verses 1-11:
"(The women) came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body (of Jesus Christ). While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men (angels) in dazzling clothes stood beside them . . . the men said to them, 'Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.' Then they remembered (the Christ's) words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven (apostles) and all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and (the apostles) did not believe them."
So it was a group of WOMEN who were the first to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ's resurrection . . . and it was the MALE disciples who lacked faith! Do you really think Jesus Christ would want his most faithful followers to be silent? Of course not. The Apostle Paul was arguably the founder of fundamentalist Christianity, so it's no accident that statements from one of his letters would be used to discriminate against God's female servants. Paul made pronouncements against both women and Gay men, but neither Paul nor his words are divine. He never walked with Jesus Christ. He was not the definitive authority on what a woman's relationship to God should be. The story told in the Gospel of Luke tells us more about that than Paul ever could. The unfortunate lady you're speaking of should go out and find herself a church where God is worshipped instead of the Bible. It makes all the difference!
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at
8/21/2006 4:13 PM
It's their church - she knew the rules (for 54 years) and their right to can her. If I were her I'd have gone to a different church a looooong time ago. What was she doing there???
posted by Anonymous, at
8/21/2006 4:43 PM
That'll teach her for having the audacity to be born a woman. The nerve of some people! I wonder if they could put her in touch with an ex-woman therapy group.
No, I'm not being serious. I'm simply following this particular brand of thinking to its absurd, yet logical, extreme.
The Christian church belongs to Christ, not to its caretakers! People need to realize that. If church officials substitute their own laws for God's laws, no matter how often they claim it to be, their church is not Christian. Jesus Christ spoke directly against doing that kind of thing more than once. In the 15th chapter of Matthew, verses 7-9, he declared: "You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said ' This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.'" Christianity is defined by the Christ's teachings and personal example. It's not like a private business enterprise; it can't be defined in whatever way the CEO wants to define it. Ms. Lambert joined First Baptist Church believing it was Christian. Obviously, she was deceived! She ought to sue for false advertising on scriptural grounds.
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at
8/21/2006 5:25 PM
There is a sad irony here.
It is really quite likely that Ms. Lambert - at some point or other - taught Sunday School to the very men who later fired her. It is quite likely that it was Ms. Lambert's own teachings about a literalist fundamentalist view of Paul's writing that later came to be her cause for grief.
posted by Timothy Kincaid, at
8/21/2006 7:34 PM
I notice that the picture of the letter on the news site also seems to make reference to Adam and Eve. Much of the mysogeny in Judeo-Christian teaching is predicated on Eve being deceived by the serpent and inturn seducing Adam into eating the fruit and thus bringing sin into the world.
posted by Timothy Kincaid, at
8/21/2006 7:39 PM
Christianity is an abomination. Jesus is dead. Get over it.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/21/2006 8:47 PM
And I'll bet she would enjoy all of the gays here defending her right to speak in church! LOL
posted by Anonymous, at
8/21/2006 10:03 PM
I wonder if this church will start advocating polygamy. After all the bible clearly allows for it and even mandates it in specific situations.
It makes as more sense to say that if these people have their way, polygamy is next. Seems more logical than saying gay marriage will lead to it.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/21/2006 10:55 PM
Steve, can you give me a scriptural citation where polygamy is mandated? I'm not implying that you're wrong, but I'm not familiar with a scripture like that. I would bet that it comes from the Old Testament. I'd like to read it. Timothy, I agree with you, the alleged incident involving forbidden fruit is indeed the root of misogynism. Yet another unfortunate result of taking Bible stories literally. I don't, and I think a lot of things found in the book of Genesis fall under the category of myth.
The way Christianity is practiced in most places certainly is an abomination, but there are still Christians in the world who practice their faith correctly. Jesus Christ isn't dead. If He were, LGBT people wouldn't exist.
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at
8/22/2006 9:27 AM
"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"- Thomas Jefferson
Instead of being born again, why not just grow up?
posted by Anonymous, at
8/22/2006 11:29 AM
All religion is mythology. It's nothing more than the result of attempts by early humans to explain how we got here, which then evolved into rules to govern behavior as people started to form communities.
For individuals, perhaps religious belief provides security or comfort or some other thing that helps that person's life in some way. But when those people join together, all religion is or ever has been is a weapon. It's being used today worldwide, and as we all know, it's being used against us in this country. It's a force for oppression, and nothing more.
And the oppression that results knows no bounds, from that poor woman who had the nerve to speak in church to wars fought and governments destroyed and entire populations subjugated in the name of God. Check the news. Read history. How many wars and other conflicts were either declared based on religion or had a religious influence? It's all a tragic waste of human potential and lives, and ultimately accomplishes nothing.
The demise of religion is long overdue. We as a species will never realize our full potential until we give up our mindless adherence to mythology, and the conflict and bloodshed that inevitably follow.
How many peaceful events took place in the name of God - Hmmm, Mother Teresa and her help in Calcutta, women who help abused women and abandoned children, red cross. I'd cetainly would not want to see the world without those kinds of events. But thanks Patricia for your insight.
posted by Anonymous, at
8/22/2006 12:49 PM
I've had a love-hate relationship with religion since I was a child. But to put down another person's faith and spirituality is cold-hearted and callus. You can have your beliefs, or lack thereof, but don't presume to deny another person their beliefs.
posted by jekelhyde, at
8/22/2006 1:01 PM
Stuffed Animal, at 8/22/2006 9:27 AM
I'm not aware of any particular requirement for polygamy (though that doesn't mean I didn't just miss it). However there is a requirement that if your brother dies without an heir, you are to impregnate your sister-in-law.
(This is the basis of the story in Genesis 38 of Onan who pulled out "spilled his seed".)
While this isn't exactly polygamy, it is sex outside the "covenant of marriage - one man one woman unchanged in all cultures for 5,000 years blah blah blah" crap (which is a complete and total lie) that the anti-gay-marriage crowd preaches.
posted by Timothy Kincaid, at
8/22/2006 2:27 PM
I would say that all religion CONTAINS mythology. That doesn't invalidate belief in God. You don't have to walk inside of a mosque, church, or synagogue to experience God. You can always perceive Him with your senses, and your intellect. God is the warmth of the sun on your face. God is the smell of the flowers as you walk through a garden. God is the joy you feel when you make love to your husband or wife. God is the smiles you see on the faces of children. Wicked mankind evokes God's name for all manner of evil purposes. That doesn't make God evil, and it doesn't make God a party to evil.
Patricia, I feel your pain, and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. At one time, I absolutely despised Christianity. I felt it was the source of all the pain and degradation LGBT people have had to endure over time. I thought about the crusades, the inquisitions, the wars, all the things you mentioned. I took the Bible, and I flung it into a trash dumpster good and hard. But God allowed a battered copy of the New Testament Gospels to come into my hands soon afterward, and He prompted me . . . that's the only way I can put it . . . to read them with new insight. I discovered that Jesus Christ is the key to understanding God, and to understanding myself. For the first time, I learned WHO I am, WHY I am and WHAT I am. I am a being like the angels in Heaven. I am here as part of God's Covenant with mankind. I am a eunuch from birth, and God created me, and all other LGBT people, in His image.
I also learned that the Christian faith is like a flame. Use it in the right way, and it can cook your food, warm your home, fashion tools and do all kinds of very useful things. Use it in the wrong way, and it can bring injury and destruction. I'm not asking you to believe the things I do. I'm asking that you not judge religion, specifically Christianity, only by the actions of those people who use it in the wrong way. Mankind NEEDS something to believe in; religion wouldn't exist if that were not the case. In addition, mankind needs a code of conduct and set of ethics and values to live by. In its purest form, I think Christianity provides these basics better than any other faith. Here are two good things that resulted from Christian activism: The abolishment of slavery in the United States, and the Civil Rights movement that came afterwards. Like I said before, a flame has a variety of uses.
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at
8/22/2006 2:51 PM
Tim,
All that stuff from the Old Testament, those complicated rules about how to conduct relationships (including the well-known prohibitions against bisexuality in Leviticus), and the more draconian stuff, that applied to God's covenant with the ancient Israelites. It didn't apply to anyone else, and it definitely doesn't apply to modern man. My reading of scripture leads me to believe that God doesn't much care how we structure our adult relationships, as long as we honor them and don't fall prey to promiscuity (or engage in sexual violence, like they did in the city of Sodom). I also believe scriptural rules directed at "man" and "woman" were meant for heterosexual men and women. When Jesus Christ referred to LGBT folk, he used a different word: Eunuch. Specifically, he said we were "born eunuchs from (our)mother's womb," and the soul of a born eunuch is both male and female.
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at
8/22/2006 3:19 PM
Stuffed Animal,
Perhaps a bit off topic, my take on Sodom is that it was concerning rape. I've heard others say it is about hospitality. My dad believes that it is clearly about perversion, though clearly not about homosexuality. But the book doesn't state as fact what the sin of the city was. You said sexual violence. Can you clarify your understanding of the story? Just curious.
posted by jekelhyde, at
8/22/2006 8:54 PM
Jekelhyde,
We agree in our interpretations of the Sodom story. Sexual violence, rape, it's basically the same thing; but my interpretation may differ from yours in that I believe homosexuality (or perceived homosexuality) is an essential factor in the narrative. If you do a little research on angels, you'll find that the males (and in the Bible, all angels are male) are supposed to be androgynous in appearance . . . what most macho heterosexual men would call "sissies." Or "faggots." In ancient Sodom, androgynous men would have been mistaken for eunuchs, males who may or may not have been castrated but who, in any case, didn't have sex with females. Eunuchs were hated in that culture, just as Gay men are hated today. It's clear from the scriptural text that the men of Sodom (all of whom could not have been homosexual, it's statistically impossible) meant to do physical harm to the angels. This wasn't about lust; the mob did not intend to invite the angels to an orgy. This was the same kind of behavior that occurs today in prisons, where men perceived to be weak and vulnerable are forced into sexual slavery. The incident at Sodom should be understood as an attempted Gay-bashing. Theologians who disapprove of homosexuality have cleverly revised this story over the centuries to recast the victims as victimizers.
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at
8/23/2006 10:12 AM
Stuffed Animal,
Interesting, indeed. I've always equated the story of Sodom to prison sex, but the androgeny angle is a new and very interesting take. I mean, we're talking about the first documented hate crime. Fascinating. My father is a minister and a scholar. He has from the time of my birth told me that to understand scripture, you have to read and eventually the verse will speak to you. The Bible is so subjective that we have to feel it first before we can understand it. When an intelligent person, such as you appear to be, can read the book within historical context and lack of language barriers, it can open new worlds. Unfortunately the opposite is also true. There is no one more dangerous than an ignorant man with a bible in his hand.
As I stated in an earlier post, I've had a love-hate relationship with religion since childhood. I've come to take the bible as a series of stories meant to teach us how to treat one another and how not to treat one another. Inspired by God but not written in God's hand. It's sad that people can take a book that's meant to teach about love and compassion and turn it into a vehicle for hate and oppression.
posted by jekelhyde, at
8/23/2006 8:13 PM
Well, as it is said, all we can know of God is what we know. If we are limited in our thoughts then we are limited in our knowledge of God.
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