How does a church say thank you to a woman for over fifty years of service as a Sunday School teacher? By firing her of course! (See this link for full story : Sunday School Marm Fired)
Mary Lambert taught the Watertown NY First Baptist Church Sunday School class for 54 years before being dismissed for being a woman. That’s longer than most careers, marriages, and even parenthood. Why, you ask? The church decided recently to take a more literal interpretation of the Bible.
The First Epistle to Timothy states, “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
What a forward thinker Paul was. I suppose it would be overkill to state that such an ideal is considered not only backward in our society but also demeaning. Obviously it held a practical purpose in Paul’s day. Women educated the sons since they stayed at home until they were old enough to be trusted with the goats. A man who had a non-Christian wife faced his sons’ indoctrination into a different faith. As we know women are closer to their children because they are more sure they’re theirs (thank you Socrates.) So to bring the numbers up in this new religion, Paul had to make sure no monkey wrench (or wench) got thrown in. This also may have something to do with the focus of the DaVinci Code conspiracy, where there was a fear of women gaining power.
One point of fact that has been largely ignored when Bible literalists spew out-of-context scriptures to prove a point is the whole of the Bible was supposedly written before the 4th century. The Nicene Convention decided to leave a lot of books out due to a preordained agenda. Well, society progresses beyond the point of archaic notion. According to the Bible, a father is allowed to not only sell his wives and daughters into slavery to pay his debts but also take his mouthy son to the edge of town and stone him to death for being disobedient. Today’s laws make such activity undesirable.
Another point of contention, Paul was what we now call a misogynist. There’s a fifty-cent word for you. I don’t mean he didn’t understand women in the way all men generally don’t understand women. The Oxford Pocket American Dictionary defines misogyny as the hatred of women. The hatred of marriage is misogamy. There have been many famous misogynists in history, most of them serial killers. So Paul has company.
Additionally, the 9th century monk who translated a bulk of the Bible into Latin hated women as well. Good for the local women of his time that he removed himself from their presence. But this bodes ill for the women of passing centuries as his words were used to persecute half the human population just for being descendents of Eve.
Think of it, today’s society, women and men alike, balk at the idea of firing someone based on gender, especially teaching. We can only hope that the congregation of the First Baptist Church of Watertown NY will stand up to its tyrannical preacher and demand Mary Lambert’s reinstatement. Such betrayal must be righted.