Fundamentalism & Domestic Violence

There is a huge problem going on. With each passing day, another story surfaces of a sports player beating up a woman.

Preachers can preach against it. People can say it needs to end. But until fundamentalism looks itself in the mirror, it is not helping the cause.

There are, unfortunately, many churches and religious groups that believe women are not as good as men. Any group that does not allow women to do anything they allow men to do is not helping the cause against domestic violence.

Churches that say it’s best if women are not deacons ... churches that bar women from being their pastor ... denominations that force leaders to sign statements that say women are in a different classification as men ... these things tell their followers that men are the ultimate kind of humans and everyone else is just following and playing along.

Sure, these so-called religious bodies cite scripture in their fight against women. The problem is the Bible does not state that men are better than women. Parts of the Bible describe how certain groupings of people decided to do things, once upon a time. But the Bible does not prescribe that just because a group two thousand years ago decided to have only men in leadership, then the only way to do church today is by telling women they’re not good enough. In other words, the Bible does not give groups like the Southern Baptist Convention leeway to tell its churches that only men can be pastors of their churches.

If churches want to make the choice to limit women, okay. But quit saying that it’s God’s way.

Because when you say it’s God’s way, that tells little boys and little girls that there is a hierarchy, with men at the top and women at the bottom. They’re born either good enough or not good enough; and that’s all there is to it. Then those little boys and little girls grow up and learn to deal with the world on those terms.

This is not to say that fundamentalism directly leads to domestic violence ... It is to say that fundamentalism helps create an environment in which bringing an end to domestic violence is really, really, really difficult.