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The Religious Right’s Uppity Woman Strategy
Christine Wicker, HuffPost
A core 5 percent to 7 percent of Religious Righters are Republican theocrats, heart and soul. They will vote for McCain, even though they can hardly stomach him; they have no one else to vote for this year. For the McCain campaign the challenge is how to rouse them.
Republicans have been playing the race card every presidential election since Nixon made it his Southern Strategy. It worked then and it has worked ever since. Usually they pair it with fear of crime. They'll do it again.
But this election, the theocrats have a twofer. Michelle Obama. Racism and sexism. What a combination. Although fundamentalists once did a good job of using the Bible to support racism (children of Cain and all), they can't use God to support that kind of bias anymore. Too much backlash.
But they can make a case that God hates uppity women.
They're already working on it.
A professor of Christian theology from Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the Southern Baptist Convention's flagship seminaries, showed the way at a Texas Bible Church a week ago. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the country and a powerful voice for evangelicals.
One reason men abuse their wives is that women rebel against their husband's God-given authority, said Professor Bruce Ware. Women are sinners who want their own way instead of desiring to submit to their husbands..
"And husbands on their parts, because they're sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged--or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches," Ware said from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas," wrote Rob Allen.
Here is a summation of Professor Ware's 10 reasons that God gave men power over women from Denny R. Burk, an assistant professor of New Testament at Criswell College in Dallas.
1. The order of creation, with the man created first, indicates God's design of male headship in the male/female relationship (Gen 2; 1 Tim 2:13).
2. The means of the woman's creation as "out of" or "from" the man bears testimony also to the headship of the male in the relationship (Gen 2:23; 1 Cor 11:8).
3. While both man and woman are fully the image of God (Gen 1:26-28), yet the woman's humanity as "image of God" is established as she comes from the man. Adam names her "isha" (woman) because she was "taken out of ish (man)" (Gen 2:23; cf. 5:3).
4. The woman was created for the man's sake or to be Adam's helper (Gen 2:18, 20).
5. Man (not woman) was given God's moral commandment in the garden; and woman learned God's moral command from the man (Gen 2:16-17).
6. Man named the woman both before and after the entrance of sin (Gen 2:19-20, 23; 3:20).
7. Satan approached the woman (not the man) in the temptation, usurping God's design of male-headship (Gen 3; 1 Tim 2:14).
8. Although the woman sinned first, God comes to the man first, holding him (not her) primarily responsible for their sin (Gen 3:8-9; Rom 5:12-19; 1 Cor 15:22).
9. The curses on the man and woman indicate the fundamental purposes for which each was created, respectively (Gen 3:16-19).
10. The Trinity's equality and distinction of Persons is mirrored in male-female equality and distinction (1 Cor 11:3).
To anyone not indoctrinated into fundamentalist thinking, Ware's reasoning may seem laughable. But not to Professor Burk. He's impressed that Professor Ware used verses from Genesis and the New Testament.
Sure Jesus brought Good News, but women didn't get released from the curse. No, sir. Not them. Professor Ware showed good Biblical grounding in making that point clear.
Ware's reasoning is weak gruel, but the many quotations from the Bible floating around in it make it good, solid food to a lot of Religious Right evangelicals. Remember Ware isn't some yahoo pontificating during coffee break. He's a respected Biblical scholar, an expert in Christian theology, standing in a pulpit. He'll have plenty of yahoos ready to repeat his reasoning.
You can see how it will play out.
Michelle Obama is nobody's little woman, keeping quiet, searching her husband's face to know what she ought to say, as God intended her to be. So she can't be a godly woman..
As for Barack Obama, there are only two options for a man who doesn't control his wife.
Even the fundamentalists aren't likely to say that Obama beats her. So he must be a wimp.
Who wants a wimp for president?
