Christians never seem to stop creating situations that give Christianity a bad name. So much of it is due to selective use of scripture to justify some absolutist position to purify things. The latest is the case of First Baptist Church in Watertown, N.Y., where an 81-year-old Sunday school teacher was terminated from her adult class instructional duties because the Bible says women should not teach men.Mary Lamberts dismissal has caught a lot of national attention, and Pastor Tim LaBouf infers there is more to the story than just the woman teacher issue, but to get into that would risk the church getting sued. Clearly, the woman who has taught Sunday school there for 54 years — adult classes since 1995 — has some significant differences with the young pastor who has only been around for a little over two years. But he is the pastor, and he is male, and it is the Baptist Church where males authority goes undisputed. Only recently did the Diaconate Board vote to adopt the rule on women teaching men.
Its not that women Sunday school teachers is bad. Some 87 percent of the teachers at the church are female, while 55 percent of the Diaconate Board is female. It is just that Lambert should no longer being doing an adult class where men have to get instruction from a female. Are those men, whose minds have been fouled these 11 years by her teaching, now spiritually damaged? If they knew the Bible, why didnt them remove themselves from such an abomination at the outset? Or was this LaBoufs interpretations coming in and his acting to change things.?
LaBouf wrote this in the dismissal letter to Lambert: As pastor of the First Baptist Church, I take very seriously my responsibilities to watch over the congregation, and I also take very seriously proclaiming scripture as the truth and applicable for all situations of life and containing the blueprints for how we should structure our church corporately. I believed based on the consistent teaching of scripture that there are qualifications for both men and women teaching spiritual matters within the church. These qualifications do not mean that one is superior or more important than another. It only means that God has special plan for each of us in accomplishing his work within the church setting.
The letter goes on: I believe that as a pastor, I will ultimately stand before God and give an account of how I proclaimed and enforced his word within the church setting especially. Now I am fully aware that not everyone ascribes to my view of the scriptures, but I would never vilify them for having a different religious view, and I would hope that if you do hold a different view, that you would extend to me the same courtesy. It notes that the board decided to adopt the scriptural approach based on 1 Timothy 2:11-14: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.
That scripture has, of course, been used to keep women in their place for centuries. But to most peoples wisdom and credit, it has come to be dismissed with such biblical anachronisms as slavery, stoning, animal sacrifices, dietary rules and polygamy. How is it allowed that women may be teachers of male children, even past “adulthood (an age threshold that has varied widely), then arbitrarily they should not teach “adult men whatever constitutes “adult”?
Troubling also is that the pastor serves as a city councilman in Watertown. He sounds like a hypocrite in his public statement that his stance against women teaching men in Sunday school would not affect his decisions as a city leader. I believe that a woman can perform any job and fulfill any responsibility that she desires to outside of the church, he said.
To his credit, Mayor Jeffrey Graham came back with this response, If whats said in that letter reflects the councilmans views, those are disturbing remarks in this day and age. Maybe they wouldnt have been disturbing 500 years ago, but they are now.
Lambert has gotten lots of calls with support, even invitations to go teach adults at their church. Of course, what First Baptist Church of Watertown is now doing has been the policy in some Arizona churches of a variety of religions. People silently put up with it or move on. Recent news reports show 90 percent of teachers and 60 percent of principals in Arizona grade schools are women. If you look at all seminaries, the majority of the next generation of pastors-in-training are women. Why is it bad when a woman teaches men at church but its OK to learn a thing or two from them at a city council meeting or elsewhere? Wheres the logic?
This active Christian celebrates all he has been taught in adult education and from the pulpit from women across the decades. Its been a wealth of wisdom and a body of teaching that has been authentic, edifying and intellectually stimulating. Keep women silent? What a waste. To Pastor LaBouf, keep women silent and you keeping staying in the biblical dark ages.
