Photo Credit: Charisma Magazine
After Beth Moore suggested on Twitter that she is going to preach at a church for Mother's Day a crowd of prominent Southern Baptist men charged after her. Moore is a very popular speaker and her speeches are crowded. She also wrote dozens of best-selling books and has an outsize social media following, but her only "flaw" is that she is a woman.
“For a woman to teach and preach to adult men is to defy God’s Word and God’s design,” wrote Owen Strachan, professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo. “There’s just something about the order of creation that means that God intends for the preaching voice to be a male voice,” piped in R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., as Religion News Service reports.
Women have always been downgraded under theological rules and their role and position have always been lower than the men's. That is why those reactions are not strange at all and they have their roots in a decades-old theological battle. According to Religion News Service, The Baptist Faith & Message, the Southern Baptist Church’s official statement of doctrinal beliefs asserts that although men and women are created equal, they have different roles in marriage, family and the church — a position called “complementarianism.”
According to the document, which was amended in 1998 to include a section on the family, a wife “must submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.” Only men can serve as pastors of a church, a distinction added to the statement in 2000. According this doctrine, women are supposed to be submissive to their husbands and to men in general; they are not supposed to preach to men.
It doesn't matter if the person who speaks is male or female the most important part is what is that person speaking about. It looks like the Church is not fond of female speakers even when that speaker is encouraging people to come to know and love Jesus, as Moore once tweeted, according to Christian Headlines. The Church is so afraid of any change in their doctrine that it gives no chance to women to do something for the Church itself. Their position is just strict, as always, and the Church is failing to support women once again.
