Mass rape, bride burnings, the brutal disfigurement of young girls in Afghanistan and wife beatings – who is responsible for these things? Not criminals, but Christian clergy who have never hurt a fly. It is religion that “creates the context” for any crime anywhere in the world perpetrated against a woman. Anytime a woman is slapped in the face or paid less than a man, the evil of faith is to blame, unless of course it is a New Age faith.

Such is the claim of the preposterous, babbling King Lear of modern politics, Jimmy Carter, and his New York Times fool, Nicholas Kristof, who wanders with the former president on the windswept heath of advanced political dementia. Religion is one of the “basic causes of the violation of women’s rights,” Carter said not long ago, and last week Kristof echoed this refrain in a column.

“There is of course plenty of fodder, in both the Koran and the Bible, for those who seek a theology of discrimination,” says Kristof. He’s absolutely right, although the “theology of discrimination” has been weakened in the past 150 years, leaving us with religious rites that are group therapy and entertainment. Imagine what Christianity would be like if this so-called oppression of women were lifted. Women bring incalculable goods to Christianity. Their role is central. But all would be changed if women were in charge. The pop songs and social services would remain; the tenor of worship and ritual would be altered.

Let’s be honest about what people like Carter and Kristof want. First, they want the elimination of Christianity. Second, they want the subjugation of men.

By oppression of women, Carter obviously refers to the refusal by Catholics and other denominations to allow women clergy. Just for the record, let’s review the reasons why women should not be Christian clergy, leaving aside the most salient and theologically compelling facts that Christ was a man and that he chose no women apostles. Bear in mind that this is only a brief look at the damage entailed by women clergy, similar in kind to the transformation of the military caused by women soldiers. Women cannot be priests for the following practical reasons:

• Women get pregnant. The idea of pregnant women leading Christian services is offensive, as the pregnant woman is already engaged in an entirely different holy office. Likewise, a woman cannot be both a mother and a priest. The two roles are mutually exclusive.

• There cannot be celibate clergy living in coed conditions. Women priests necessitate married priests, changing the foundation of the priesthood in the case of Catholicism and increasing the costs of supporting priests. Estranged, separated or divorced priests, as well as priests with very large families or who use birth control, would all present complications.

• Women are different from men. They possess a different psychology, attuned more to interpersonal relations. The priesthood demands the presence of a priest at the most intimate events in a person’s life, including sickness, death, marriage and baptism. While a man can remain detached from these emotional occurrences, a woman by her very nature cannot.

• Men are better theologians. The number of brilliant female theologians is not large enough to fill a moderately-sized powder room. Even average theologians are much more often men. 

• The appearance of women on the altar is distracting because a woman’s appearance is always distracting.

• Women are likely to turn the priesthood into full-time social work, in keeping with their maternal nature.

• Women do not like being led by women. This is a widely proven fact of female psychology. Whether they recognize it or not, women do not want women priests.

• Men tend to leave any profession dominated by women. Women will dominate the priesthood once it is open to them.

The idea that the priesthood is primarily a position of power, rather than one of onerous responsibility is what is most offensive about the statements of Carter and Kristof. The majority of Christian believers are not clamoring for women clergy. But they have a hard time putting their finger on why they don’t particularly feel women clergy are  necessary. They have been bullied by the likes of Carter, Kristof and other pushy feminists into refraining from any generalizations about sex roles.

                                                                 — Comments —

Darrell Dow, who sent the link to the Kristof column, writes:

Here is one thigh-slapper: “Today, when religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior.”

Yeah, it couldn’t possibly be that men and women are different and that those differences complement and strengthen one another.  Brings to mind Chesterton’s poem, “Comparisons”:

If I set the sun beside the moon,
And if I set the land beside the sea,
And if I set the town beside the country,
And if I set the man beside the woman,
I suppose some fool would talk about one being better

Please continue to do battle with the unbiblical egalitarian heresy that continues to pummel the church and culture.

Hannon writes:

Laura wrote:

“The appearance of women on the altar is distracting because a woman’s appearance is always distracting.”

I laughed so hard at this, because it is true, yet it is a shock to see it stated out loud, so to speak. Men seem to be scenery fixtures and their presence is usually unremarkable and often ubiquitous. I suspect this explains the mostly archaic habit of women being sequestered– excepting those too young or old to reproduce– as is common in Moslem culture. After many generations this arrangement has fallen away in the West but not entirely. In Latin America young ladies seem to disappear once they are ensconced with a husband and bearing their first children.

Laura writes:

That’s weird that it’s shocking, isn’t it? Everyone knows it’s true. Everyone knows that their mother’s appearance was more entrancing when they were babies and children than their father’s. We do notice men, we just don’t appraise them in the same way and their appearance doesn’t have the same power. The solution for women religious orders has always been to cultivate an anti-feminine appearance and especially to cover their heads. Religious habits work, because they give a woman dignity and don’t pretend she’s a man, but I don’t think the masculine, impersonal style adopted by some nuns and Protestant female ministers today gets around the problem as well. Even in the case of a very unattractive woman, one is drawn to contemplating her looks.

A woman’s voice is entirely different too. Even when she is speaking, a woman often brings the quality of song to her words. There’s more inflection and coloring. That’s a minor point, but in some women the coloratura is pronounced and everything they say is heightened with emotion. This is a serious problem when sermonizing and Scripture reading. A woman’s voice lacks authority and neutrality.

Mark writes:

Here’s a quote from Boswell’s Life of Johnson: 

I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. 

Johnson: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

Johnson’s remark is not contemptuous toward women, but based on a scriptural recognition that God has given the sexes different roles, and that these roles, while explicitly articulated in the Bible, are generally understood by all peoples through natural observation. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “doth not nature teach you …?” 

Personally, I’m very interested in what women have to say on most topics, as evidenced by the fact that I’m a devoted reader of this site, and others like it. But I’m not interested in hearing what women preachers have to say, and always turn the radio off when they come on. I don’t even evaluate the content of what they’re saying; they have no business in the pulpit.

Laura writes:

Nicholas Kristof would say that somewhere on this earth, a woman was just slapped, or perhaps given a pay cut, as a result of Mark’s statement.

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