Sometimes, I think religious people purposely provide fodder for the atheists… (emphases mine):
The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers coursework in Greek and Hebrew, in archaeology, in the philosophy of religion and – starting this fall – in how to cook and sew.
Southwestern Baptist, one of the nation’s largest Southern Baptist seminaries, is introducing a new academic program in homemaking as part of an effort to establish what its president calls biblical family and gender roles.
Apparently, it’s the Southern Baptist wives that asked for the course:
Seminary President Paige Patterson [Hemant’s note: (Just to prevent confusion) Paige is a male], a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has its executive committee headquarters in Nashville, said wives of seminary students asked for the homemaking courses. The program was approved by seminary trustees in the fall.
“We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God’s word for the home and the family,” Patterson said at the denomination’s annual meeting in June. “If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed.”
Because the key to a good home isn’t love or spending time with your family. It’s sewing and cooking. Oh no! They forgot to include the course on washing dishes! Their families are doomed…
“Women continue to make more inroads into traditional male bastions, which could be provoking Patterson to do this,” [director of Baptist studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology David] Key said. Patterson is “trying to draw the line in the sand of where women need to be.”
Ironically, Patterson’s wife Dorothy is “the only woman faculty member now teaching in Southwestern’s theology school.”
Only women can enroll in the classes, and I might be more upset about that than I am that they’re being offered in the first place. Hell, I could have benefited from taking a cooking class in college
The upside to this is that any women taking the sewing/cooking classes will at least end up with concrete skills. Not that the school would like to see a woman working and making her own money, but if a graduate of these classes wanted to get a job as, say, a chef at a restaurant or a tailor, that might be a possibility. She’d have an easier time getting a decent-paying job with those skills than she would with a degree in Communications.
(Thanks to Stacia for the link!)
[tags]atheist, atheism, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Bible, Gender roles, Paige Patterson, Southern Baptist Convention, David Key, Dorothy Patterson[/tags]
