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April 25, 2007, 01:22 PM ET
No Women Allowed?
A female professor is suing Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for firing her because she’s a woman, writes Thomas Bartlett in a recent Chronicle article.
The dismissal of Sheri Klouda, an assistant professor of Old Testament languages, may denote a wider ban on female professors in the School of Theology there, he writes. In fact, Bartlett notes that even though the percentage of female faculty members at seminaries has tripled over the last 30 years, their number is dwindling at Southern Baptist seminaries.
The reason? A belief among some conservative Southern Baptists — Paige Patterson, president of SBTS, being one of them — that women should not be allowed to teach men because the Bible prohibits it, Bartlett observes:
In June 2003, soon after his election as the eighth president of Southwestern Baptist, Paige Patterson was interviewed by the Baptist Standard, a Texas newspaper. In the interview, he was asked whether women would be allowed to teach in the seminary’s School of Theology. The issue of whether women should teach men remains controversial among Southern Baptists, some of whom contend that the Bible forbids it. “I believe there are ample numbers of men out there,” he replied. “I will build the theology faculty around them.”
Oddly enough, Mr. Patterson’s wife is now the sole woman theology professor at SBTS, although according to the institution’s Web site, she’s actually in the women’s-studies program, rather than the School of Theology. While SBTS officials refused to comment on Ms. Klouda’s case, Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Kentucky, consented to be interviewed by Bartlett:
Mr. Moore says that professors must be “models of pastoral leadership.” Because women can’t be pastors, that isn’t possible, he explains.
Bartlett reviewed the Web sites of all six Southern Baptist seminaries and found no women listed among faculty members teaching in schools of theology.
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