Former United States President Jimmy Carter made a public break with his life-long church body, the Southern Baptist Convention. In a written statement, he identified the Baptist view of gender roles as the reason for his departure. Carter's assertions are mixed: some are accurate, and some are not. Sorting his truths from his errors is instructive. He writes about the order of creation; the organization's
leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.
Carter objects to the word 'subservient' as apparently used by some leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, given that he places it in quotation marks. A statement written in 2008 by Richard Land notes that
the Southern Baptist confessional statement does not state that "women are to be subservient to men."
In either case, there is no textual evidence to suggest that Christianity demands that women be "subservient" to men. No Greek or Hebrew word which is commonly rendered into English as 'subservient' is applied to women in the New Testament. Whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention has applied, or does apply, that word to women is a matter to be investigated. If it has so used that word, Carter is right to decry such usage.
By contrast, the New Testament does use the word 'submit' which is semantically nearer in flavor to 'support' than to 'be subservient'. The use of 'submit' has long been a source of discomfort to interpreters. Perhaps it is best understood that marriage is a relationship - a exceptional one, to be sure, but a relationship among others nonetheless - and Christians are supportive of those with whom they are in relationship: spouses, siblings, friends, coworkers, neighbors, etc. Why the New Testament specifically underscores this call to support on the part of the woman and not of the man, is a good question. Why does Carter not applaud or encourage the desirable quality of supportiveness?
To understand Eve as solely or even primarily responsible for original sin is also textually not plausible. Adam and Eve share responsibility for original sin; this much is clear in the Hebrew text. God, e.g., gives Adam a consequence for sin before He gives a consequence to Eve, and it is to Adam, not Eve, that God asks the ominous question, 'what have you done?' There is also a plausible argument to made, which would assert that Adam might bear more than half of the responsibility for original sin. If, in fact, the Southern Baptist Convention assigns more than half the blame to Eve, Carter is correct to question it. Whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention did or does so, is a matter for investigation.
On balance, Carter makes points worth considering. Whether or not they are accurate requires further investigation, and whether or not they are significant is questionable, given that they find fault not with Christianity, but rather only with one particular organization, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Herein lies perhaps Carter's greatest weakness, inasmuch as he has busied himself with questions of what the Southern Baptist Convention might have done, instead of questions about what the Christian faith in fact does. Specific questions about statements from the Southern Baptist Convention belong to the minutiae of Church History studies. Such questions might be interesting and valuable to scholars, but the significant questions about what the living Christian faith does are the questions by which one evaluates that faith.
This error on Carter's part is compounded by a reading public which is all too inclined to confuse churches with the Christian faith. Churches are flawed, imperfect, and sinful organizations, populated by flawed, imperfect, and sinful human beings. One expects churches to fall short of the high standards they profess; indeed, they expect it of themselves. Christianity, by contrast, is something alien - it is not a human product. It is the infinite manifesting itself among the finite. It is a self-disclosing glimpse given by a perfect and sinless God - a glimpse of loving compassion, stern justice, and superlative power.
Carter first broke with the SBC in 1993. He released a statement at that time explaining his move; he released similar statements in 2000 and 2009, each time announcing his departure from the denomination: re-wordings of the previous statement. In the most recent statement, he writes that he is disappointed with the SBC leadership because it
prohibited [women] from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.
As in the political world - despite combat roles for women in the military, there is still no consensus about units like the Navy's SEALs, the Army's Rangers, and the Green Berets - and in the sports world, intelligent and honest people disagree about the roles of women in the institutional church. Carter raises a real issue. But the issue, though real, is not one which touches the Christian faith. It may be a valid reason for leaving the SBC, but it is not a relevant bit of data by which to evaluate Christianity.
Much of what Carter says as a critique of the institutionalized church is valid, and it is utterly appropriate that he, as a practicing Christian, make that critique. The distinction is between the Christian faith and the church, and for two millennia, Christians have subjected the church to relentless criticism. In this sense, Jimmy Carter is a minor figure in a long line of reformers, from Jan Hus to Martin Luther, from Athanasius of Alexandria to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
A critique from a practicing Christian, directed at the institutional church, is however not a critique of Christianity; to the contrary, it is a support and defense of Christianity, because the very basis of its critique is to find those points at which the church fails to measure up to Christianity.
It is at this point that Carter's denunciation of the SBC goes awry, because he is smart enough to know his audience, and knows that it will be taken as a critique of Christianity. Faithful Christians who wish to reform and improve the church will read Carter's complaint thoughtfully; they may agree with some or all of it, or they may disagree with some or all of it. But Carter's writing will come, and has come, before the eyes of those who attack not only the church, but also, and primarily, the Christian faith. Those who, deliberately or accidentally, fail to distinguish between an all-too-human organization and the Rabbi from Nazareth - they will understand Carter's attack as an attack on Christianity itself, or they will deliberately misunderstand it as such.
Entering the discipline of comparative religious studies, Carter notes that
This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.
Seeming uncomfortable, Carter intimates, but does not directly state, that women have fared better in those cultures which were largely formed by the Christian faith. To cite one example, it was first in those nations that women obtained full franchise and suffrage in the political process. The Territory of Wyoming granted full voting rights to women in 1869; by around 1920, women in the United States, Canada, and most European countries had the vote. By contrast, in those nations whose cultures were shaped by Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and other traditions lagged significantly, and there are still states on this planet in which women are denied the vote, primarily Muslim states. Carter hints at this, but does not make the point explicitly:
In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.
It was in those same nations - those shaped by the Christian worldview - that marriage began to be understood as volitional: women were not sold into marriages, and arranged marriages declined in number until they disappeared. Likewise, violence against women was seen as a moral evil: to use a coarse phrase, "wife beating" became socially stigmatized and eventually illegal.
Carter's statements raise valid questions, and are worth reading. The timing of the statements, and he periodic re-issuing of the statements, is clearly politically motivated, some of the statements being timed to correspond to major elections - he issued another statement in 2012 - and his willingness to subordinate the spiritual to the political is saddening. As a principle, a proposition articulated by a faithful Christian in a critique of the institutional church may also be true when an anti-Christian asserts that same proposition in a critique of the Christian faith, but while it is equally true in both cases, the critiques are not therefore equally valid.
Carter, wittingly or not, formulated theses and implied others, which are then picked up by those who would attack the faith he professes. He is smart enough to know better. He was willing to offer ammunition to those attacking the faith, if it was the price for supporting his party or one of its candidates. Carter's character is brought into question if he is willing to expose his faith to abuse for the sake of bringing glory to his party.
(In the interests of full disclosure, the author of this blog is neither a member of the SBC nor a supporter of Mr. Carter's candidacies.)
