It's A Woman's Pulpit?

Recently a Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia associated with the theologically liberal Cooperative Baptist Fellowship hired a woman pastor. This has resulted in no few comments in the media since it’s the first time a Baptist Church, at least one nominally affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, has allowed a female senior pastor.

Of course these comments are mostly sighs of relief that the Neanderthals of the SBC have finally wised up and gotten with the program, etc. Such was the case recently when Dick Yarborough saw fit to comment on it in the Gainsville Times

Mr. Yarborough took to task Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for daring to take the position that the Bible teaches differing roles for men and women and that one of the roles God has reserved for men is that of pastor. Of course Mr. Yarborough did not provide any Biblical support or theological analysis for his position. However, what he lacked in theological precision he more than made up for in snide comments and anecdotal “evidence”.

I won’t go into all the reasons here that orthodox Christianity has for hundreds of years viewed the pastorate as an office for men only. The burden of proof in this case is on people like Mr. Yarborough who want to overturn the orthodox position.

So what did Mr. Yarborough offer in support of his position? Gems like these:

“Methodists have had female ministers for a long time.”

Well, yes, true enough, longer, for example than they’ve had homosexual or lesbian ones but how exactly does that bear on whether the Bible supports the legitimacy of a female pastor? I mean just because I’ve done something for a long time does that mean God approves of it?

“Now these many years later, there are a host of crackerjack female ministers in the Methodist Church, and we haven't been zapped by lightning yet.”

Oh, OK. So as long as we’re not immediately struck dead by God when we do something, we can take that as His approval for whatever it is we’re doing.

Then there’s this wonderful of theological insight:

“Do you have any divorcees in your church? Read what the scripture says about them (Matthew 19:9). And, finally, are there any women in your congregation wearing gold or pearls and/or plaiting their hair (1 Timothy 2:9)?”

I’m not really sure what he’s getting at here but he seems to be saying for one thing that he views Jesus’ emphasis on the sanctity of marriage to be over done and that it is just as passé to consider a person who remarries after an unbiblical divorce to be involved in adultery as it is to insist that pastors be men. The belief that divorce (with certain exceptions) is a sin and that remarriage after divorce is adultery is a position, supported by scripture, which has also been taught by orthodox Christianity down through the centuries. However, once you’ve eliminated one Biblical teaching by filtering the Bible through the lens of 21^st century feminism, what’s a few more, right?

“Let's face it: God is a lot smarter than we are”

I have to give him credit for getting this one right. However, what Mr. Yarborough fails to understand is that God is smarter than we are even if what He tells us offends our 21^st century egalitarian sensibilities. The Bible tells us in Proverbs that there is a way that seems right to us but in the end it leads to destruction.

That’s not necessarily immediately being struck dead, by the way Mr. Yarborough.