Tuesday, September 09, 2008

How I made the mistake of my life

I was skimming through a post on Dan Kimball's Vintage Faith about the problem of Governor Palin being accepted by complementarians (Conservative Christians in the American church who contend that a woman's role in the church is to complement the male leaders by serving in any other capacity except to lead over men or mixed-gender meetings) and ran across this eighteen-paragraph comment (which I also found on this female author's website):

The Republican Party has chosen a woman to run for the second highest office in the land. What have we come to that no man in this country is qualified to do the job and we had to pick a woman? Sodom and Gomorrha couldn't produce ten righteous souls, and the Republican Party can't offer up one man that is more fit than this woman to run for Vice-President of the United States.

It continues with what, a few paragraphs later only looks like biting and baited sarcasm against this way of thinking. But a few more paragraphs down, I realize that there's nothing Swift-ian about this article. The lady, who is telling both male and female readers that we should be ashamed of ourselves for thinking of nominating a female to lead and detract from the "glory of the male", is quite serious.

Towards the end, she gets a bit more personal (for my sake, at least):

I haven't even spoken about how a vote for Sarah Palin is a vote for a woman to leave her God-ordained role at home and take on the ruling of a country instead. Let's not even try to fool ourselves into thinking she can do both, and we might want to consider whether we want to support her abandonment of her children, including her nursing baby.

Mr. Palin has agreed to be Mr. Mom. He will try to be a helper meet for Sarah. And clearly she will be known in the gates, when she sits among the elders of the land. So Mr. Palin might be what many of us women aspire to be: a Proverbs 31 woman. Will women look to him then as a role model for being a good housewife? Or will we look to his wife as a role model for being a good leader? Will men look to Mr. Palin as a role model for being a good househusband? Or will they look to his wife as a role model for being a good leader? I don't know; but I know that God is not the author of confusion, and we are one confused nation. And we shake our heads and wonder why homosexuality and unwed mothers seeking abortions continue to flourish in the land.

Wow. God is not the author of confusion, but of condemnation??? Sorry for choosing to be a stay-at-home dad and allowing my wife's giftings and abilities to so shame me. You must be so ashamed of me, CED (who, by the way, also goes by her maiden name. But I'm sure that's not done in a way that rejects the name her husband gave her and thereby wouldn't shame him...). After all, it's all you talk about. What a horrible father Mr. Palin is, taking care of their four children.

Shame, shame, shame.

2 comments:

  1. Why you... you, you apostate infidel, you! I am shocked! Shocked, I say! You have abandoned your God given manly role in life!

    OK, enough of that... Palin was a poor choice for McCain's running mate and I believe would be a poor VP (or president when McCain kicks the bucket). But NOT for the resons stated in this article. It's just silliness...

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  2. re: palin, yeah. why people can't see through the exploitation ruse i'm just not getting. gov. palin is no senator clinton, that's for sure.

    re: the comment, y'know, it's my hope and dream to become a Proverbs 31 wife. what does she know?

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