Baptist Seminary Training Women for 1950's TV Shows

One of the the fundamental truths I've learned about the religious right is their focus on looking back, taking the church and society back to "a simpler time" when issues were viewed in black and white without all that, you know, thinking.


Speaking of black and white, the Southern Baptist Convention (pause to allow for cringing) wants to train the next June Cleaver. If you don't know who that is, you don't watch nearly enough TV reruns. This isn't a reality show, however. Much worse, it's part of the cirriculum being introduced at the Southwestern Baptist Seminary.


As reported by Ethics Today:


Paige Patterson (the seminary's president) announced at the SBC meeting in San Antonio that his school was offering an academic program to train women how to make a Christian home.


The chairman of the convention's Council on Family Life even wrote in a denominational magazine, "The wife should not be burdened with the necessity of working outside the home."

"We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God's word for the home and the family," Patterson told messengers in San Antonio. "If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed."

The so-called cultural crisis apparently necessitated the seminary's program which will require 23 hours of course work, including seven hours of "design and apparel" with a lab for clothing construction. Another seven hours of course study covers meal preparation and nutrition.


If anyone reading this is holding their breath waiting for the SBC to open their arms to GLBT people, you need to exhale and start breathing normally right away.


They've got to learn about color TV first.