With all the noise leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention produce to warn against the threat gays allegedly pose to “traditional marriage,” it’s easy to forget their efforts to combat another purported threat: women. Recall that in 1998, the convention adopted a resolution calling for a woman to “submit herself graciously” to her husband and “to serve as his helper in managing the household,” just “as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” In 2000, the convention voted to say that women should not be allowed to serve as pastors.
And at this year’s convention, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson announced a new strategy: a “homemaking” major at the seminary. “Folks, if we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed,” said Patterson, one of the leaders of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s.
Now, Patterson is warning that the growing trend of college-educated women imperils the “male intelligentsia” (a concern he mentioned at the World Congress of Families in May), and that this “feminization” of society will lead to a France-ified America:
“Sixty percent of all your college and university students are now female. Somebody said, ‘Well, you’re opposed to that?’ No, I’m thrilled to death that they’re in upper-level education, as far as women are concerned,” says Patterson. “But I think it is absolutely tragic that only 40 percent of the students are men. [W]hat that means is that increasingly, our country will not have a male intelligentsia,” he stated.
Dr. Patterson says if that trend continues, the United States will eventually follow in the footsteps of France and England when it comes to social policies and politics.
