Standing Watch

America’s 39th President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Jimmy Carter, has publicly released a statement announcing his split from the Southern Baptist Church, where he has been a member for 60 years.  He and his wife, Roselyn, had begun to distance themselves from the Church a 9 years ago, but Carter remained a deacon and Sunday School teacher until very recently.  Mainstream media, in an attempt to portray this favorably towards the Southen Baptist Church, is playing down the more recent developments as “old news” that isn’t newsworthy.  Carter’s public decision was announced July 5, 2009, on the web site The Age, based in Melbourne Australia.  It was only today picked up by mainstream media, and subsequently the blogosphere here in the US, when people began to demand mor information on the issue.

At the core of Carter’s recent and public decision to leave was the policies of the Southern Baptist Church with regards to the rights and treatment of girls and women, and there carefully selective use of biblical scriptures to justify ordering girs and women to be subservient to men.  Here is the full text of Carter’s statement:

I HAVE been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. 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. 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 and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. 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.

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. 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.

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.

In some Islamic nations, 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.

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. 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.

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. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. 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.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

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.

Many commentators in the blogosphere pounced on this, missing the point entirely about the role of religion in society, and in particular of how certain religious leaders take things way out of context and twist them to serve their own selfish purposes, not God’s.  That nearly hal of those people were women (or at least claiming to be) was not lost on me.

Carter’s statement is accurate, in the extreme.  We can see evidence of that today, right here in the United States.  From pay inequities to the decline in research on women’s health issues.  From the lack of competent women holding political office or military leadership positions, to the lack of women holding leadership positions on corporate boardrooms or higher education institutions.  Every inequity women face right now can be laid at the feet of the male dominated religious leadership that holds to the principle that women, not men, are responsible for “Original Sin,” and hence must be subjugated, controlled, exploited, and oppressed in every way possible.

Let’s examine that principle.  The concept of “Original Sin” blames Eve for eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and for then “tricking” or “enticing” Adam into doing likewise.  What is all to often ignored in such an interpretation and distortion is that God told Adam, not Eve, to not eat of that tree.  Adam, a man, told Eve that God had made such a commandment.  Satan, being an Angel of God at this time, told Eve that she could, and should, eat of that tree.  So, she did as God’s own angel said she should, believing that this was okay.  Adam, who did hear directly from God to not eat of that tree, disobeyed God, a sin, and ate of the tree of his own accord, knowing full well the consequences from God’s own spoken words.

If, as so many religious leaders claim we should, the Bible is to be taken as the literal Word of God, then where is Eve’s sin?  Wasn’t she obeying God’s own Angel, one set into a position of authority and leadership higher than all the other angels?  Was it not Adam who commited the original sin, by directly defying God’s order?  I have found nothing in either the New Internation Version nor the King James version of the Bible (the closest to accurate interpretations of the original Bible I can find) to indicate that Eve was at fault for anything, and that instead she was deliberately deceived.  Adam, on the other hand, was deliberately defiant, and disobeyed God for his own selfish purposes.

But, instead, we are told that Adam was deceived and seduced by Eve into disobeying God, and that it wasn’t really Adam’s fault.  Because of this deception, and ignoring Adam’s defiance of God, women must suffer and be subjugated in every way to men.  And so it has been for thousands of years, despite the fact that the various texts religous leaders use to justify such policies and practices clearly tell them otherwise. 

As a minister, I know this all too well, as one Church after another rejects my calling as contrary to Christian Doctrine.  When I was trying to get into medical school years ago, I was flatly told by university representatives that “women, especially one your age” cannot compete effectively enough to obtain entry or admission (I was 30 at the time, with a 3.95 GPA), and that I should consider nursing instead.  Now I work as a truck driver, a male dominated industry where sexism is the norm, and where women must endure criticism and extreme sexual harassment, for no other reason than we are women, and without any recourse. 

I haven’t abandoned my calling to heal the spirit, nor my dreams to one day be able to heal the body as well.  But, like most every woman I know, I am doing what I must to survive in a society that says that I am at fault for the ills of society, simply by the fact that I am female, and for no other reason.

I thank Jimmy Carter for his statement above, and for the many years he tried to use his intellect, his faith, and his role as a leader on many levels, to change from within a repugnant policy that twists faith and religious writings to serve the prurient whims and desires of men who seek nothing less than power and domination on every level over all women.

I also want to than The Age of Melbourne, Australia, for showing the courage and determination the media, and indeed many in the blogosphere here in the United States, lacked.