More From the Religious Right

I tried to copy and paste an article from The Salt Lake City Tribune but it didn't work too well.

Tina at Fuzzy and Blue has an excellent post which includes the link to the article.

Remember faith based initiatives? What we feared has come to pass. These agencies are accepting public funding while discriminating in their hiring practices. Is anyone surprised?

And then there's this.

First Baptist Church in Watertown, NY, a member of the American Baptist Convention, has fired a woman who taught Sunday School there for 54 years. Their reasoning? She's a woman. They claim to have other reasons which for reasons of "Christian courtesy" they will not disclose.

I was raised in a member church of the ABC. My mom was a Sunday School teacher there for at least 40 years, maybe more. We were in that church every time the doors opened. It's quite different from the Southern Baptist Convention, or so I thought until today. I was wrong.

I went over to their website and read the letter from their pastor (who is also a member of the City Council). He's basing his decision on the literal interpretation of one verse of the Bible, (what scholars refer to as proof texting and I call cherry picking) the same verse which prohibits some denominations from ordaining women. But a Sunday School teacher? What could this woman possibly have done to deserve this treatment? She has to be in her 70's or 80's.

They're within their rights to do whatever they wish and Baptist churches are to some extent autonomous. I don't know why this decision was made (although I have some ideas from reading the pastor's letter) but I'm disappointed at their treatment of a woman who has served them for that length of time. Much of it sounds like political infighting. Of course they are disappointed at the media attention at what they believe should have been their little secret. Gosh, it almost sounds like the federal government.

It also attracted the attention of the Watertown Mayor who was not happy.

Several of the local churches have offered her a church home. I hope she takes one of them up on it. It would be too much to hope that the women of the congregation who keep the doors open or have in every church I've ever attended follow her.