Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, has spent a majority of this post-presidency addressing world-wide civil rights. Most recently, he has written a book called, “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power. He believes that, “The existing abuse of females is the worst, and most pervasive, and unadressed human rights violation on earth.” His position is that all religions discriminate against women to various degrees. In some parts of the world, this leads to abuse, rape and even mercy killings and in America it sometimes means women can’t be priests, deacons or viewed as equal with men in the church. President Carter believes this leads to inequalities at home and in the workplace. Most recently, he left the Southern Baptist Church because religious leaders at their annual convention voted to, “require women to graciously submit to their husbands,” and not allow women to serve as ministers or deacons. In response, President Carter said, “I feel I can no longer in good conscience support these ideas.”
For further reading on this, go here.
Joe’s Perspective: I understand that this is a controversial subject and everyone has personal and religious beliefs tied to such a topic. For me, personally, I am pleased to see President Carter take such a strong stand on this issue. I believe that most or all religious texts were written by men hundreds and even thousands of years ago. Therefore, I believe these texts are biased towards men with inherent beliefs about the role and position of women. These writings directly and indirectly influence how females have been viewed and treated worldwide. On this topic, I side with compassion and tolerance rather than traditions and biases.
If it’s time for the NFL to examine how their viewpoints influence the way men treat women in this society (something I wrote about extensively on in 2014 (https://characterandleadership.com/blog/no-more.html), I also believe it is time for various religions around the world to do the same.
Your Turn: Please place your comments below, (2) like and share our Facebook page (character development & leadership) or (3) tweet to @CDandLeadership)
1. Do you believe that religious teachings and scriptures have influenced laws, policies and societal viewpoints of women?
2. What is your opinion on this topic? Should religions change? If you were the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Catholic Church or Muslim religions, how would you vote?
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Your point on women and the bible…..The bias towards men is a cultural norm prevelant thousands of years ago. At the time woman’s voices were not admissable in court etc….
What is radical is that by Jesus’ time HE broke all kinds of cultural norms by hanging out with not only women, but prostitutes, not only prostitutes but prostitutes from enemy camps. Samaratians were half breed dogs to the Jews and Jesus has a recorded (to make the point) of conversations with them. Not to mention average gals off the street.
Paul in his writings about how the church should function with people that have decided to have JC pay for their offensives against humanity talks that there is no difference between men and women in the church, Paul talks about Phoebe who was a woman and a church leader in Cenchreae. Paul also directs Timothy to hold the gals in leadership to the same standard as the men. VERY radical words in the first century.
The whole submittance thing is such a overblown misread. Because the charge to the men just before was that the man should lay down his life for his gal, like JC laid down his life for the church. How many men do you know that actually live like this!!! IF they did I don’t believe there is a gal living that wouldn’t want to follow a guy like that. Problem is that most men are vacating their role as servant to a role as dictator or video gamer. That is not supported in Paul’s writings. Peter writes lead your wife by way of understanding. Understanding your wife, listening, asking question, input, engage her because she is valuable etc.
But this all hinges on believing that JC has saving power to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves, namely be good enough in God’s eyes. With the humility to ask JC to cover us for our offensives to God’s creation (read here men, women, nature) there is no basis really on doing any of this. Which leads to a fall back position called cultural norms which are heavily male biased as you stated earlier.
Author
This is good stuff Fritz. I used to do martial counseling with deeply religious couples. It was always interesting to see how males interpreted certain passages in the bible differently from men. I felt that men selectively read the passages that gave them power and authority. It never felt equal.