Homeschool News & Views

Issue 36, for August 31, 2007

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers.

This past week the Dallas Morning News ran an article about something that made nationwide news.

“The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers coursework in Greek and Hebrew, in archaeology, in the philosophy of religion and -- starting this fall -- in how to cook and sew.

Southwestern Baptist, one of the nation's largest Southern Baptist seminaries, is introducing a new academic program in homemaking as part of an effort to establish what its president calls biblical family and gender roles.

It will offer a bachelor of arts in humanities degree with a 23-hour concentration in homemaking. The program is only open to women.

Coursework will include seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation, seven hours of textile design and "clothing construction," three hours of general homemaking, three hours on "the value of a child," and three hours on the "biblical model for the home and family."

There you have it. That was the story which made nationwide headlines in all sorts of media. Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Nashville is offering a major for women in – are you ready?

Well, perhaps you ought to run the children out of the room so they can’t hear what I am going to say, or at least give them some parental guidance about this material.

Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Nashville is offering a degree for women in –

Homemaking!

Are you shocked by that?

Much of the nation was. That’s the only reason the Dallas Morning News wrote this article. They considered the subject so shocking that they had to write a feature article about it. When SBS offered a course in Biblical Greek, the Dallas paper ignored that. When SBS offered a course in homiletics, the DMN could not have cared less. But when SBS offered a program for women in homemaking -–

The Dallas Morning News thought that was worth an article. Kind of like Elvis being found alive again or aliens getting lost in New Mexico.

The article continues, “…the program is raising eyebrows among some Southern Baptists, who say a degree concentration in how to be a Christian housewife is not useful, and a waste of seminary resources.”

Now that’s quite a statement there, that learning how to be a Christian housewife is not useful. Do they, then, want their Baptist pastors to have unchristian wives?

“Seminary President Paige Patterson, … “said wives of seminary students asked for the homemaking courses…”

“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 said... “If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed.”

Terri Stovall, dean of women's programs at Southwestern,… said the purpose of the program is to strengthen families.

“Whether a woman works outside or strictly in the home, her first priority is her family and home,” she said. “We just really want to step up and provide some of these skills.”

A description of the homemaking program on the seminary's Web site says it “endeavors to prepare women to model the characteristics of the godly woman as outlined in Scripture.”

“This is accomplished through instruction in homemaking skills, developing insights into home and family while continuing to equip women to understand and engage the culture of today.”

We will sum up what happened. The seminary offered a homemaking program for women because some ladies, such as wives of seminary students, had requested it.

And that made national news.

It’s pretty hard for a story to make national news, you know. There are always so many shocking things going on, that something has to be pretty shocking to break out in the media.

Like this ugly story from Reuters:

“Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho was arrested by a plainclothes police officer investigating complaints of lewd conduct in the men's public restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Craig entered a bathroom stall next to the police investigator, placed his bag against the front of the door and tapped his foot in a gesture commonly used to try to pick up men in public toilets.

“I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct,” [said] the investigator in the police incident report.

Craig is in his third term and up for re-election next year. He is a former member of the Senate's Republican leadership and played an active role in the 1998 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

In a June 2006 Senate vote, Craig voted in favor of an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage in the United States as a union between one man and one woman. The amendment was defeated by one vote.”

Now that story is truly shocking to me. Over and over we are seeing conservative Republicans who make a lot of noise about standing up for morality but are themselves immoral. Over and over this is happening. It’s disgusting and discouraging. America is becoming the land of the restroom rendevouz. Even the conservatives are doing it.

Yet alongside news like that is the story about the seminary program in homemaking. Which story is more shocking to you? I think the liberals were more shocked by the homemaking program than by the homosexual liaison by a conservative Senator.

The Today show, which is on NBC in the morning, had a special segment about the SBS homemaking program. They had a woman on there, one of those who are sometimes referred to as “feminazis”, to attack SBS for doing such a heinous thing. On the other side of the debate was a man from Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s long time Christian family ministry from Colorado.

In this debate, the feminazi did almost all the talking. She was rude enough not to let the man get to say much, and he was polite enough to let her do that. That’s often the way it is in these debates. The feminazis don’t believe in letting the other side say anything, so knowing that, some time limits should be set beforehand so both sides can have a say.

On the Today show, the feminazi said that Southwestern Baptist Seminary was taking women back to the 1950’s and that women should have choices today. The Focus on the Family man said that this is a woman’s choice. Of course, you will recall that it was women who requested the coursework in the first place, and it is women who voluntarily sign up and pay for the courses. But, as so often happens, liberals do not allow choices which are not their choices. We see that with the public schools. The liberals will allow big schools and small schools, charter schools and magnet schools – anything as long as it is a tax supported monopoly which they still control. The choice they will not allow is for parents to use their tax dollars to help pay for whatever education they choose for their children.

Isn’t it incredible that such an innocent thing made nationwide news? What’s more incredible is that the university was widely attacked for offering a homemaking degree, and much of the attacking was done by those who call themselves Christian.

From the Dallas Morning News article again:

“The Rev. Benjamin Cole, pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington and a frequent Southern Baptist critic, wrote about the homemaking program on his blog.

"At first it was almost incredible to me," Cole said. "I thought this is not happening. It's quite superfluous to the mission of theological education in Southern Baptist life. It's insulting I would say to many young women training in vital ministry roles.

"It's yet another example of the ridiculous and silly degree to which some Southern Baptists, Southwestern in particular, are trying to return to what they perceive to be biblical gender roles."

So that Baptist pastor said it is insulting to young women to teach them to be Christian homemakers.

Also on the web site of the Dallas Morning News was a comment section, where readers could opine on this shocking development. Almost all of the initial comments posted there were extremely critical of SBS and their daring action. One early poster did say that the SBS university campus was their property and they could do with it as they pleased. That’s about all the support they got, something like, “Well, if they’re crazy enough to do that, it’s their property.”

The things that make the news show us what this country is like. When a university offers to teach women how to be Christian homemakers and that makes national news, how far have we slid?

I mean, have women ever actually been homemakers?

Well, I guess so. Like maybe for 6000 years.

What do women do as Christian homemakers?

Well, they love their families, their husbands and children, and dedicate their lives to them.

Do they eat their children?

No, they just make them meals to eat. And love and nurture them, and cuddle them and clean up after them, and – well, they make a wonderful Christian home. That’s what a Christian homemaker does.

The liberal religion is love of self. Always take for yourself more than you give to others. I think that is the one biggest problem with the liberal public schools. The students pick up that omnipresent attitude of self love, self fulfillment, self exaltation. “I have to be somebody.” “I have to show off.” “I have to do something to stand out.” “I have to be cool.” There is never the idea of serving God and others. The humanist religion teaches the young people to serve themselves, and in doing so, it robs them of the meaning of their lives.

This contrast is shown with the example of Lot and the men of Sodom. Lot was trying to serve the visitors to Sodom, and the men of Sodom were trying to serve the visitors to themselves. The public schools operate under that same self serving philosophy, and now they are even following the customs of Sodom.

The two great commandments are to love God with all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself. Reverse that and you have Satan’s religion. Love yourself above all others.

If a woman wants to selflessly love God, her husband and their children, liberals hate that. They absolutely cannot stand it. Even if just a few wives of theology students in a Baptist college want to learn homemaking, the liberals go crazy. If they had their way, and someday they may the way the nation is going, no woman would ever be permitted to be a homemaker. They would all be like liberals: 4000 square foot houses with granite countertops, one kid and two divorces.

It’s easy to see where all of this comes from. This is the mind of Satan, and he is desperately trying to destroy every family in America. And every Christian homemaker in America is standing in his way.