Southern Baptist leader pushes back after comments leak urging abused women to pray and avoid divorc

(could somebody PLEASE explain to me why there are any women IN the southern baptist misogynistic circus0?

Southern Baptist leader pushes back after comments leak urging abused women to pray and avoid divorce
by Michelle Boorstein April 29 at 8:22 PM Email the author




Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is pictured on Oct. 12, 2010. (Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram via AP)

The leader of a major Southern Baptist seminary issued a statement Sunday pushing back after a 2000 tape surfaced purporting to quote him saying that abused women should focus on praying and “be submissive in every way that you can” and not seek divorce. Paige Patterson is president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Fort Worth school whose Web site says it is one of the largest seminaries in the world. About 15 million people are part of Southern Baptist churches, the largest Protestant group in the United States. Patterson is slated to deliver the primary sermon — a high-profile honor — in June at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Dallas.

Patterson, who declined to comment Sunday, is heard on an audiotape being interviewed in 2000 about what he recommends for women “who are undergoing genuine physical abuse from their husbands, and the husband says they should submit.” “It depends on the level of abuse, to some degree,” Patterson says. “I have never in my ministry counseled anyone to seek a divorce and that’s always wrong counsel.” Only on an occasion or two in his career, he says, when the level of abuse “was serious enough, dangerous enough, immoral enough,” has he recommended a temporary separation and the seeking of help.

He goes on to tell the story of a woman who came to him about abuse, and how he counseled her to pray at night beside her bed, quietly, for God to intervene. The woman, he said, came to him later with two black eyes. “She said: ‘I hope you’re happy.’ And I said ‘Yes … I’m very happy,’ ” because it turned out her husband had heard her quiet prayers and come for the first time to church the next day, he said.

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The author of that blog told The Washington Post that the tape has surfaced several times since 2000 on church watchdog sites. That author said it was published last week in light of “the new season” of the #MeToo movement and a “reckoning” that appears to be happening in society around abuse, the person said. The author spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person is no longer part of the Southern Baptist community and doesn’t want to become a central part of the story. According to the author, Patterson in the tape was being interviewed by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an evangelical organization that promotes the idea that men and women have different traditional roles. Efforts to confirm that with the council late Sunday were not successful.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/04/29/southern-baptist-leader-pushes-back-after-comments-leak-urging-abused-women-to-pray-and-avoid-divorce/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6b33f45cb446