Submit, and what’s for dinner?

Oh the joy of learning at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. How the world opens up before the eager student, how the riches of human knowledge spill out before her excited gaze.

It offers for instance ‘classes in homemaking.’

The academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies. Philosophical courses such as “Biblical Model for the Home and Family” teach that God expects wives to submit graciously to their husbands’ leadership.

So that all female students will realize they mustn’t get married? Does it work? What are the stats?

Seminary President Paige Patterson and his wife, Dorothy – who goes by Mrs. Paige Patterson – view the homemaking curriculum as a way to spread the Christian faith. In their vision, graduates will create such gracious homes that strangers will take note. Their marriages will be so harmonious, other women will ask how they manage.

Yeah? You think? You sure other women won’t ask how ‘Mrs. Paige Patterson’ can stand the boredom, the dependency, the servility, the official inferiority? If they can even stand to go in Mrs Man’s house at all, that is.

[G]uest lecturer Ashley Smith, the wife of a theology professor, laid out the biblical basis for what she calls “the glorious inequalities of life.” Smith, 30, confided that she sometimes resents her husband…But then she quoted from Ephesians: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” And from Genesis: God created Eve to be a “suitable helper” for Adam. “If we love the Scripture, we must do it,” said Smith, who gave up her dreams of a career when her husband said it was time to have children. “We must fit into this role. It’s so much more important than our own personal happiness.”

Oh, you bet; ‘fitting into’ a role laid down for us by a few guys a few thousand years ago is much much much more important than our own personal happiness. Naturally. One’s own personal happiness is important only for men, women are just tools. Well done Ashley Smith; enjoy your glorious inequalities.

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