Women Can’t Teach?
This isn’t Alabama, it’s Watertown, New York: Sunday school teacher dumped for being female. With 54 years of experience, this clown has the gall to say she is not qualified to teach?! What are the chances this clown could have read the Bible if a woman hadn’t taught him to read in elementary school?
Here are a couple of things that women have taught us lately that men seemed to have missed:
“There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.” US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor
“A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.” US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
The winters are pretty bad in Watertown, on the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Maybe he froze his brain by breathing through his mouth when outside?
Update: Mustang Bobby has a carefully reasoned response to More Holy Crap.
8 comments
Heh.
I saw this on ABC’s nightly news, and thought – if all the female Sunday School teachers in every church were “fired”, there would be no Sunday Schools. In our 400-some member church, I can think of only 2 or 3 men who teach the children & youth SS classes on a regular basis, none who sponsor the children’s and youth fellowship groups, and maybe four who teach adults.
If ministers are stupid enough to ‘fire’ female Sunday School teachers the ministers won’t hold their own jobs very long.
I just let fly my own rant on this topic; I saw it earlier today and couldn’t wait to dig into it.
Notice that this “minister” is also on the city council. I propose — in my posting — to ban all clergy from holding positions of power in government. Why not? It’s just as outrageous an idea as his of banning women from teaching Sunday School.
I can’t believe that this guy can get away with this in New York. This would be American Baptist, not Southern Baptist, and there is no history of this kind of garbage.
They don’t say, but I have a feeling that this guy is a Republican and has drunk the Koolaid. This is a wannabe Falwell, who is looking for a media contract.
Exactly, Andante, what organization, religious or otherwise, doesn’t depend on women to teach children. If this guy thinks he can keep the attention of a roomful of young children, he has never tried it. It is a skill, an art, and it may be sexist, but there aren’t many men ready or willing to do it.
Bobby, Pope John Paul II did that for Catholic clergy in 1980, feeling that you cannot serve two masters and you should not render unto Caesar what belongs to G-d. The American Taliban are alive and well.
Watertown NY, or Whatever town, Georgia, when it comes to religious fanatics, it’s all the same… God told him to fire her, let’s forget that we had thousands and thousands of years of the Goddess…
Old saw: Teach a man and you teach one man. Teach a woman and you teach the community.
The Central Asia Institute has plenty to say about what it means to educate girls, who will eventually educate their own children.
Cat Daddy & Dr. Squeeky: Ancient Pagans were an eclectic lot. Let’s just say they gave equal time to deities of either gender.
Hah, I knew that Timothy quote was familiar. In Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman points out that it is generally accepted that this was not written by Paul, but by someone later, and conflicts with other statements Paul made in Galatians and Corinthians.
CDDS, you would hope that the realities of a harsh winter would keep people sensible, and not go off on these tangents. After a four-foot snowfall you need all the help you can get.
Anya, you would think that someone who would think of themselves as a conservative would understand that women have always been the primary teachers of children. I wonder if this guy’s church has been interviewing new pastors.
I’ve wandered a bit around the church website and statements released by the pastor and Diaconate Board. They both indicate ‘other reasons’ are also behind the decision, and state the lady taught adults…among them – (gasp) adult men.
I don’t know what those other reasons might be, and perhaps they’re valid. If so, you’d think they would be more damning than an octogenarian flaunting herself in front of grown men.
You don’t do something guaranteed to annoy the generally more active majority of your congregation if you have “other reasons” for your decision. This is the sort of thing that results in domestic strife and lost membership.