Sunday, January 28, 2007

"Bloggers decry Southwestern's dismissal of female professor for teaching men"

No, I did not make this title up. It is the title of this January 24 article about a Hebrew professor at Southwestern Seminary who was fired for the aforementioned reason. Is the following logic difficult for any of the rest of you to understand? First women are not allowed to be pastors. Then they cannot be missionaries without first being married. Now they can't even TEACH a LANGUAGE to men. What's next? They can't teach Sunday School to 2nd graders? So I suppose an alternate title for this blog is, "Yet another reason that I feel the need to explain when I tell someone that I am Baptist." Below are the links to two other articles about the incident and a few key excerpts in case you don't want to read all of the articles.

January 25 article
January 25 article 2

"It cannot be argued that the institution had religious convictions that a woman cannot teach men -- the institution's ultimate authority (the trustees) hired Dr. Klouda," Burleson said. "It cannot be argued that the institution had religious convictions against a woman being in a position of 'authority' over a man -- the institution's ultimate authority hired Dr. Klouda. It can be argued that, in violation of federal law, Dr. Klouda was discriminated against because of gender."

"I suppose she could have tried to get a job as a secretary or a librarian, but this woman has gifts of intellect and scholarship that God intends her to use to their fullest potential," Cole write. "So she got two degrees from Criswell, both with honors. She received top honors at Southwestern Seminary, and she was able to buy a home and teach her students to love the biblical languages she spent years studying. But Paige Patterson thinks it's Sheri Klouda's job to be a homemaker..."

Klouda said she did not harbor resentment against the institution, but added: "I expected the best of Dr. Patterson and that he wouldn't do something like this. I believed him when I talked to him when he said I didn't have anything to worry about and that he was okay with what I was teaching. I was very disappointed later...when he contradicted what he had said."

So am I, Sheri. So am I. In fact, I find that I am consistently disappointed in Paige Patterson. He makes my heart hurt.

2 comments:

Susan said...

I would comment, but I think I might be too frustrated to form complete sentences right now. Ridiculous. It's all ridiculous.

Ashley Smith ~ The Primary Source said...

I've been following this online for some time now through Burleson's blog (you can find the link for it on my blog)...ridiculous was exactly the word I have been using about this whole thing. People can be so stupid!!

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