Boundaries Part 2

Women have a long tradition of not speaking up for their own well-being. That was obvious in the post from yesterday about foot-binding.  Mothers continued to allow their children to be tortured because they themselves had been, because society said so, and because it had always been done this way.  However, some mothers could not stomach to bind their little girl’s feet so it was common in families that an elder aunt or even paid foot-binders would do the deed.

In the story in Wikipedia, it said that Pearl Buck did not speak against the custom of foot-binding in her book “The Good Earth.”  She refused to do it because it spoke badly against a nation of people, and she did not want to offend them.  Even I hesitated before writing that yesterday.

We are still hesitant to speak against a group of people. The Southern Baptist Convention comes to mind.  I have before me a journal that Christians for Biblical Equality just sent out to what they call hierarchal churches.   It is a great journal, and a great witness and I hope and pray that it gets in the hands of those who need it.  The church I got it from is not a hierarchal church and I wonder how they got their mailing list.

But there is a story in this journal that bears witness to what I have just said about failing to call names, particularly the name of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Following is a quote from one of the articles in the journal that demonstrates this:

“Not long after this, our denomination declared that all the ministers holding denominational posts would be required to sign a document affirming their agreement with the revised statement of faith.”

Upon reading this, many and probably most Southern Baptists would think that she is talking about some obscure radical religion and would totally discount what she just said.  However, she is talking about the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 which the majority of Baptist churches have agreed to and many post it on their website.  It was the revision of the Baptist Faith and Message 1963 which she refers to.

But because of our insistence upon not calling names and not embarrassing anybody, 16,000,000 Southern Baptists with 46,000 churches and 6 seminaries with 49 satellite campuses get by with what she just said.   The secretaries who read this, if any do, will not recognize their own church denomination in this article.

My book names names. My book names some of those who wrote it (I don’t know all of them), and it names those who wrote the Danvers Statement, because – surprise, surprise – some were the same people. My book names names because how can you write a book about Dethroning Male Headship without getting to the modern day source of it?

When you have demanded an apology from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, how can you write a book that does not name names?

Will you join me in speaking out against the Southern Baptist Convention and those influenced by the SBC who continue binding our women by their strict interpretation of the Holy Scriptures?