WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
May 7, 2018
By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and a major force in conservative Christianity, is encountering its own #MeToo moment: a wave of anger over repeated comments by a prominent church leader seen as demeaning to women.
In sermons he gave between 2000 and 2014 that have been made public, Paige Patterson, seminary president and former denominational president, has encouraged women who are abused by their husbands not to divorce but to pray instead. He also commented in the sermons on female bodies, including that of a teenage girl, and women’s appearances. Now, thousands of people are calling for his removal just weeks before he is scheduled to deliver a key sermon at the huge denomination’s annual convention.
As some — including women — in the evangelical denomination rally around Patterson, 75, who is revered as an instrumental figure in the group’s rightward shift over the past several decades, other leaders are voicing concern that this furor is about much more than one man’s sermons. The uproar calls into question how women are treated in this religious community that preaches the theology of complementarianism, which says men and women are called to different roles, with men leading in the church and the home.
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