To the Right of the Religious Right

It's easy to criticize America's Religious Right because of all the extremist views they hold, but not everyone realizes that there are even more extreme religious believers who are well to the right of the Religious Right. What makes them important is the fact that they aren't simply more extreme, but because they defend ideas and principles which are consistent with those of the "mainstream" Religious Right.

In fact, it could be argued that these further extremists are actually more consistent in their views and that the "mainstream" Religious Right has had to compromise on too much for the sake of political respectability or expediency. Given how anathema the idea of compromise can be to the Religious Right, it's really disturbing to imagine these defenders of uncompromising right-wing Christianity having any sort of influence over the course of political events.

Ed Brayton quotes an article written by Matt Trewhella, pastor of Mercy Seat Christian Church in Wisconsin:

After watching a week of ridiculous attacks on Sarah Palin which so clearly exposed, yet again, the rank hypocrisy of the left and their lapdog media, I was almost ready to vote for McCain and Palin myself. Almost.

But I won't. I was never keen on McCain to begin with, and his decision to add a woman to his ticket sealed my decision. I won't vote for them. Why? Because I'm a sexist (as many accuse)? No. But because I'm a theist.

I believe in the God of the Bible and I want to see my life conducted according to His Word, and the life of our nation reflect the teaching of His Word. I will not throw my vote behind the Christ-hating egalitarian agenda of the socialist elitists of this nation.

And what's so "Christian-hating" about the McCain/Palin ticket? Egalitarianism — by which Trewhella means allowing women to have positions of power and authority:

God's Word is clear that men and women have distinct roles in which they are to function - both being dear and important to the design of God. Nevertheless, I regularly run into Christian couples who have no idea that, biblically, there are distinctions for men and women. They have no problem with the man staying home and the woman being the provider. They pompously challenge me (as they condescendingly look at me as though I'm some kind of cultural Neanderthal) to show them "one scripture" which states the woman is to stay at home and the man is to go out and provide. This is how bad the confusion is in our nation, even among those who should know God's ways.

I quickly point out to them Titus 2:5 where Scripture teaches that the older women are to admonish the younger women to be, among other things – "homemakers!" In I Timothy 5:14 the Scripture declares that the younger widows are to "marry, bear children, and manage the house!" You can't get much more – see spot run – then those verses. Men on the other hand are told they have "denied the faith" and are "worse than an infidel" if they do "not provide" for their families (I Tim. 5:8)!

To be fair, Matt Trewhella has a good case here. The Bible does indeed declare that women should not have authority over men, the context does not limit this to just the context of churches (which means that it applies to all areas of life), and the Bible does suggest that women generally (limiting this to just younger widows seems like an unreasonable interpretation) should be have babies and stay home (which implicitly precludes going out to have their own careers). If you are going to employ the Bible as a blueprint for society, then it follows that you should oppose women in positions of authority or in fact women doing anything outside their primary, divinely ordained roles as mothers and homemakers.

The Religious Right pays lip-service to these principles, but avoids taking a public stand that fully and completely promotes them. The Religious Right will support removing women from positions of authority in churches and will promote the idea of women submitting to men in the household, but they aren't taking a firm stand against women having authority over men generally or in support of women leaving careers to take up full-time homemaking. In fact, several prominent leaders of the Religious Right are women and are generally accepted in those circles.

So it appears that there is a lot of compromising going on in the mainstream Religious Right: they are forsaking the values and principles they claim to have. Why? Well, to be quite honest, the modern world has moved on. Leaving aside the gross immorality of relegating women to such a fully developed second-class status, it's completely impractical. There's no way that women could leave the workplace to become full-time homemakers. Women themselves wouldn't stand for it — not even women in the Religious Right, as demonstrated by their willingness to take on important leadership roles in their own movement.

Matt Trewhella is correct in his description of what the Bible says and I think he's correct in the conclusions he thinks that a literal reading leads to. As far as I'm concerned, that's just one more reason to reject the Bible and Christianity as any sort of reliable, moral, or practical guide to how to live one's life personally or in how to structure society. As a product of human minds trying to address human concerns it's inevitable that there will be some parts of both that will always be relevant, but its a rickety system that's showing its age. We can do a lot better today and need to look forward.

It should be noted that Matt Trewhella is far from being alone in thinking that it's anti-Christian to give women authority over men. Gospel Today is a magazine for evangelical Christians but it got into trouble because a recent issue dared to give cover space to five women — all pastors of Christian churches. Lifeway Resources, a bookstore chain owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, pulled the issue off the shelves and kept it behind the counter like some stores do with porn.

Teresa Hairston, owner of Gospel Today, whose glossy pages feature upbeat articles about health, living, music and ministry, said she discovered by e-mail that the September/October issue of the magazine had been demoted to the realm of the risque.

“It’s really kind of sad when you have people like [Gov.] Sarah Palin and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton providing encouragement and being role models for women around the world that we have such a divergent opinion about women who are able to be leaders in the church,” Hairston said. “I was pretty shocked.”

Chris Turner, a spokesman for Lifeway Resources, which runs the stores for the Southern Baptist Convention, said, “It is contrary to what we believe.”

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Chris Turner is quite correct: having women in positions of authority is contrary to what the Southern Baptist Convention teaches and so it's only to be expected that they would avoid promoting a publication which itself promotes such a situation as if it were good. What I wonder, though, is why Christians like Chris Turner aren't more consistent like Matt Trewhella is — the belief that women shouldn’t have authority over men is in no ways limited to just the church.

Trewhella's refusal to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin has the same theological basis as Lifeway's refusal to give Gospel Today its usual shelf space, except that Trewhella is taking this theology to its logical conclusion whereas other conservative, evangelical Christians don't... almost as if they are deliberately avoiding doing so because the consequences of taking their own positions seriously and consistently would just be too difficult to bear.

That said, Matt Trewhella's arguably accurate examination of the demands of traditional, orthodox Christianity are not matched by an equally accurate or reasonable examination of modern political developments:

The egalitarian agenda has been pushed in this nation for about 100 years now, and is historically rooted in socialism. The Suffrage movement, wherein women obtained the right to vote, was manufactured by socialists who - because of the Christian consensus in the country at that time - guardedly used Christian words (and dress) to move their God-hating agenda forward. You can go to countless pro-abortion and pro-homosexual (lesbian) websites today which boast of their roots being founded in the Suffrage movement.

Today, almost all people (including Christians) cannot fathom what caused these cultural Neanderthals to even think that a woman should not be allowed to vote. Truth is, they had a plethora of reasons. For example, the agenda was to "liberate" women to vote, and thus "denigrate" the role of men as heads of their homes, as their own wives could now vote against them regarding matters of public policy. Hence, Christian people opposed suffrage because it was viewed as an attack upon the structure of the Christian family. This is a huge presuppositional and theological matter.

The socialists, statists, humanists – the God-haters – have always hated God's order for family and spend their lives trying to destroy the Christian concept of family and to re-define "family" to what they think "family" should mean. The Suffrage movement was part of that process for them, and Sarah Palin running for vice-president is a continuation of that process. The leftists are just mad because they wanted "their girl" to be first. But most people on the right have become socialists themselves, hence the pom-pom waving for Sarah.

Treating women like equal human beings who deserve an equal role in society is no more "socialist" than is treating black people like equal human beings who deserve an equal role in society. As far as I can tell, the primary reason why such beliefs have been closely associated with socialism (and I do mean both — a popular and common attack on the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s was that it was "communist" in origins) is because Christianity has been so closely associated with the status quo, defending unjust privileges, supporting the exploitation of lower classes, etc. Socialists, then, became the primary defenders of equality and justice.

Eventually, of course, you find Christians on the side of justice and equality. Given time, social conditions change to the point where the immorality of whatever injustice is at issue becomes obvious and some Christians, unable to deal with the cognitive dissonance, search for verses or traditions that might justify challenges to the status quo. Sometimes very creative interpretation is required and sometimes it's not, but in a system as old and diverse as Christianity you'll always find what you want if you work at it. So a conflict between Christians and non-Christians also becomes a conflict within Christianity itself as some believers continue to defend the old injustice while others argue for real justice.

Both sides manage to insist that they are on the side of "real" Christianity while the outsiders continue to argue that it really doesn’t matter which position is more validated by scripture, traditions, revelations, or anything like that — what matters is that there is injustice, that people are suffering, that this is immoral, and that the situation must change. If someone needs scripture, religious authorities, or religious traditions to tell them that it's wrong to treat a person as inferior because their skin is darker, because they don't hold the same opinions, or because they lack dangly bits between their legs, then they really don't "get it."