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The writer lionizes Jimmy Carter for giving up his principles and abandoning his long-held faith. This is heroic, apparently. However, when someone like Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade) abandoned baby-killing and became a Christian, well, there was no parade for her. The Left didn't applaud her principled decision.
I wonder why? Was it because the Left is all about the agenda? Of course. The Left will accept any technique, employ any rhetoric, and denigrate any person for the sake of the agenda. The ends always justify the means.
And we need to wonder why the author needs to recommend his version of Christian doctrine. Is he trying to "improve" the faith? Does he have some helpful suggestions?
No, he's wanting Christians to read it because Christians need to change. In the face of less-than persuasive rhetoric from former President Carter, which the author thinks is devastating to the historic Christian perspective, Christians apparently should be so ashamed that they change for the sake of getting back in Carter's good graces.
Read on:
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Former President Jimmy Carter has taken a stand for equality in a big way — by giving up his church. In a 2009 op-ed titled Losing my religion for equality published in The Age, Carter explained his “painful and difficult” decision to leave the Southern Baptist Convention after his six decade-long association with the religious group.
“I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years,” Carter wrote. “My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.”
“So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult,” Carter wrote. He says that it was unavoidable, given the faith’s views on women: (Views which the SBC stubbornly won't change to suit Carter or contemporary secular culture.)
It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam (The SBC was "Claiming?" Ge. 2:21:
"So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh."Now, it's up to you to decide whether or not you believe this passage, but there is no "claiming" involved. It is a real, unadorned, word for word quote from the Bible.)
and was responsible for original sin, (I spent a considerable amount of time trying to locate such a statement on the part of the SBC. I could find no such reference, although there are some others out there who do make the claim.)
ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands (Politifact rates this claim "mostly false.")
and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. (Don't organizations and groups get to choose their organizing principles? Don't religions get to choose what they believe? President Carter has been a Southern Baptist for 60 years. Was he unaware of the church's doctrines, sort of like Obama was unaware of of Jeremiah Wright's egregious preaching?
Apparently, sometime at around 59.5 years, Carter decided he didn't like SBC teaching. He's free to do so, but was he oblivious before?)
“This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. (Now, in an effort to muddy the waters and create a false correlation, Carter drags in other religions, thus gaining a whole new source of atrocities to enumerate. This conflation allows him to impugn his particular target by using unrelated bogeymen.
This amplification will, by the end of the article, clumsily facilitate the author's claim of religion being the cause of every societal problem.)
Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths,” Carter added. (Again, read the SBC statement as quoted by Politifact: "The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image." Does this sound to you like the SBC views women as inferior?)
“Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.” (A spectacularly false statement. The Gospel was liberating for women. Women found freedom they had never had before, based on the Bible itself: Ga. 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." So, Carter is either lying or ignorant.)
Pastor Stephen Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona is a perfect example of the attitudes Carter referenced in his 2009 piece. In a 2014 sermon, Anderson explained that women should not speak in church — even to say “Amen.”
“First of all, it’s not for a woman to be doing the preaching. And second of all, it’s not for women to be speaking,” Anderson explained. “Even if they were to have a question, they’re not to ask that question in the church, number one. And number two, even if they wanted to ask questions of their husband, they should wait until they get home.” (The author locates one guy and uses that opinion to paint the entire denomination. Hmm.)
“At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime,” Carter wrote. (Which no one in mainstream Christendom, let alone the SBC, believes. But that's the way it is with the Left. They take an idea, add to it, modify it, expand its scope, change its meaning slightly, and suddenly we have a monster. This is intellectually dishonest and manipulative.)
“But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.” (It's the church's fault? Really? Whaaa? Again, note the progression. From a church doctrine teaching that a christian woman must be submissive to her husband, we go to millions of people dying and being made sick.
Frankly, this is looney tunes talk. It's the product of a warped mind. No reasonable person would make such a claim, but Carter does. And strangely, the author repeats is soberly as if it was of great importance. Thus we can conclude that this is yet another example of leftist double-think, a technique right out of their playbook.)
Carter explained that the religious beliefs held by Southern Baptists is damaging in every aspect of every life in every part of the world: (We note for the record that President Carter is indeed intentionally lumping the innocuous teachings of the SBC in with the most egregious excesses of terrorists and religious despots as if they're synonymous.)
The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met. (SBC teaching does no such thing. This doesn't even pass the smell test. What we have here is the next escalation in rhetoric. Note the stages. We started with the idea that SBC teaches that "women are somehow inferior to men," morphed to the SBC causing women to die, and now we have arrived at the most astounding claim of all, that all over the world women are enslaved, kept uneducated, and forced to bear children! Will we next read that pastors are executing women parishioners?)
In some Islamic nations, (Beginning with the SBC, and then escalating the rhetoric beyond all measure of rationality, we are now talking about Islam itself. Which of course means the SBC is exactly like the worst excesses of Islam. We have moved from the ridiculous to the outrageous. Carter must have Alzheimer's. That's the only way I can account for this fantasyland story.
And by the way, when did Islam suddenly lose its admiration of the Left as a "religion of peace?")
women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime. (Continuing the guilt by association. This has nothing to do with the SBC, but it serves the purposes of the author to paint the SBC in an extreme manner as possible so as to extend condemnation of religion in general.
We know that the Left hates intellectual diversity, hates religion, and especially, hates people who believe and act upon their religion in ways the Left disagrees with.)
The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. (So now the SBC teaching is responsible for pay inequality as well. I get the feeling before the author is done, every problem of society as identified by the Left will be laid at the feet of Christianity.)
The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family. (And the SBC clearly is in opposition to this, hm?)
It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.
“I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge,” Carter wrote, but he said that he had banded together with a group of “eminent global leaders” committed to “challenging injustice wherever we see it.”
“We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women,” the former President wrote. “We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.”
Carter explained that, across the world and across every religion, leaders have chosen stances that subjugate women — an act that is clearly in violation of Jesus, Muhammad, and other religious leaders’ teachings:
The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions – all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.
America’s religious Right has, unfortunately, overwhelmingly taken the stance that women are inferior — and its politicians show it. In late 2014, Republicans unanimously blocked a bill aimed at negating the gender wage gap and ensuring that women continue to make 77 cents for every dollar men make.
In January 2015, House Republicans proposed a bill that would allow the government to lodge itself inside the uterus of every single woman in the country by mandating ultrasounds before abortions. This attitude that women should lose all rights to their own bodies is so pervasive that Republicans attempted to make it legal in South Dakota to murder abortion providers.
In 2011, Georgia lawmaker Bobby Franklin tried to eliminate the word “victim” from all statutes dealing with stalking, rape, obscene telephone contact with a child and family violence, and relabel all victims as “accusers,” according to CNN. “It also strikes the word “victim” from statutes dealing with electronic pretrial monitoring, HIV testing of criminal defendants and pretrial discovery, the exchange of crucial information between attorneys prior to the start of a criminal trial.”
In other words, to Franklin, a woman who is horrifically violated can never be a victim until there is a conviction.
President Carter’s words need to be read by every single Republican politician, and by anyone who calls him or herself a “conservative.” Strong religious convictions are wonderful, until they interfere with the rights of others — something President Carter recognized when he gave up his religion for equality.
You can read the full piece, here.
(What a howler. An unending spew of bilge, to the point that I wearied of commenting upon it. At some point, one has to realize that these are not rational people. We see that amply demonstrated here. So rational analysis is fruitless in the face of intellectual dysfunction.
It is irrational to suggest that every single problem in the world today is due to the teaching of a church.
It is irrational to equate Christianity to Islam in its practices toward women.
It is irrational to suggest that the Christian Church is an obstacle to equality.
The agenda is clear. The Left is intent on the eradication of historic, biblical Christianity, and no technique is too extreme or outside the boundaries to further that aim.)
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