To my egalitarian friends

Here is a rock solid rule: Whenever you find yourself standing alongside Jimmy Carter, it is time for you to move! Run, don't walk!

Jimmy Carter says religion used to subjugate women

ATLANTA (ABP) -- Former President Jimmy Carter has urged religious leaders to repudiate teachings that he says justify cruelty to women.

Carter, a Nobel laureate, described in an article in the British newspaper The Observer his "painful and difficult" decision in 2000 to leave the Southern Baptist Convention after six decades.

Carter, who teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., said the decision became "unavoidable" when SBC leaders adopted a new consensus faith statement "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."

Carter said that went against his belief "that we are all equal in the eyes of God."

President Carter used this as his excuse to announce that he has indeed left the Southern Baptist Convention. He has only announced it around 23 times, just in case anyone missed it the first couple of dozen times. For some reason he seems to think that people care and miss him in the Southern Baptist Convention. As Dr. Mohler points out in an excellent blog post on this grandstanding by America's most attention grubbing former President: Individuals are not members of the Southern Baptist Convention, and there is no mechanism for individuals either to join or to resign from the denomination. Dr. Russell Moore dealt with this issue with just a touch of smarminess filling on the Albert Mohler show along with Dr. Randy Stinson, Executive Director of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Good stuff, give it a listen here.

At least President Carter admitted this much:

Carter acknowledged that some New Testament teachings can be used to support male superiority, but he countered that carefully selected Bible verses can also be used to defend slavery.

"The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women," Carter said. "They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter."

The canard that the Bible supports slavery is as ridiculous as the idea that the Bible supports incest because it deals with the subject and describes events. An honest reading of the Bible will show that the Bible not only does not support slavery, it also does not support the subjugation of women unless you wrongly define subjugation as Scripture mandated boundaries based on gender.

President Carter was a pretty poor President and he makes an even worse theologian.