c. 2003 Religion News Service

PHOENIX _ As Southern Baptists devoted time to the family, complete with a “stroller seating” section at their annual meeting here June 17-18, some of their leaders used the family focus to reiterate conservative views on traditional roles of wives and husbands.

Throughout the convention and in the pastors’ conference that preceded it, many speakers focused on the differences between men and women in the home.

“Gentlemen, we should make no apology for the fact that God has called us to lead in our homes,” Danny Akin, a vice president at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., told the convention Tuesday (June 17).

“God made a man to be the provider and the protector, isn’t that right?” asked Adrian Rogers, a prominent Memphis, Tenn.-area pastor, at the conference. “Women are built for having babies, not for fighting battles. It’s absolutely insane to put a woman on the front lines in a war.”

Southern Baptist Convention President Jack Graham said the meetings’ speeches reflect an article on the family that was added to the Baptist Faith and Message, the denomination’s faith statement, in 2000.

“A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church,” the statement’s article on the family reads. “He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

Graham said the belief about different gender roles is biblically based.

“Certainly we are taught in the Scriptures the equality of men and women in the sight of God and, that being said, within … the responsibility of the family, husbands and wives, parents and children have different responsibilities,” he said.

Two documents featuring the writings of Southern Baptists on these topics were distributed during the annual meeting, one by the wife of a former Southern Baptist president and the other by another former president of the denomination.

Dorothy Patterson, a professor of women’s studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., issued a new version of her book “Where’s Mom? The High Calling of Wives and Mothers” (Crossway) during the Baptist gathering.

“I feel … for women, the pattern of Scripture is that motherhood is the highest gift God gives to us,” she said in an interview. “And if we choose to marry, we have to be prepared to multiply, replenish the Earth, to be mothers.”

Patterson, who has three post-graduate degrees, said women can be educated but should make their children their priority.

“I work like a dog but I am not employed,” said Patterson, who attended the meeting with her grandchildren and teaches _ but is not paid _ at the seminary where her husband, Paige Patterson, is president. “I live on my husband’s income. I do that because I’m not going to ask any woman to do something I won’t do myself.”

The Rev. Tom Elliff, chairman of the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life, listed a set of “scriptural prerequisites for marriage” in “Facts & Trends,” a denominational publication.

“The husband should be vocationally focused and able to provide for his family,” he wrote. “The wife should not be burdened with the necessity of working outside the home in order for the marriage to proceed.”

Elliff, when asked about the statement, said the Southern Baptist “kingdom family” initiative “is not meant to dictate anything to anybody,” but he hopes prospective married couples will seriously consider how they will view their vocations.

“Many people are trying to have a family and raise kids in their spare time,” he said. “They see each other when they’re at their absolute worst. … That is not going to produce, generally, the kind of citizen that we want … in our nation because you miss all those incredible moments to build character.”

Asked about Elliff’s statement concerning women working outside the home, Graham said Southern Baptists acknowledge biblical references to women being “keepers of home” as well as those that speak of women being engaged in business.

“That would be the viewpoint of Dr. Elliff, but Southern Baptists have not addressed officially the issue of women working outside the home,” he said.

Robert Parham, editor of EthicsDaily.com, criticized Elliff’s comments about wives employed outside the home as an outdated notion.

“Making the husband the sole breadwinner and the wife his helpmate and a homemaker is the fading cultural vision of fundamentalists, for whom one of the last strongholds is the SBC,” he said on the Web site of the Baptist Center for Ethics.

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Randy Stinson, executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, agrees with Elliff and Patterson that wife and mother are the top roles for women.

“If there’s something going on that’s chipping away from their highest call, we think that would provide a disruption in the home,” he said. “I think that statement that (Parham) made doesn’t reflect the same high view of being a wife and mother that the Bible reflects.”

Within evangelical circles, the Minneapolis-based Council on Biblical Equality takes the opposite view of Stinson’s Louisville-based group.

The Rev. Joe E. Trull, a consultant for the council, has just co-edited a book with his wife, Audra, called “Putting Women in Their Place: The Baptist Debate Over Female Equality” (Smyth and Helwys).

“I believe the Bible teaches clearly that men and women are equal and should be treated equally, having equal opportunity in their lives to serve in home, church and society, without discrimination,” he said.

Trull, a former professor of Christian ethics at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, predicts eventually Southern Baptists may become more inclusive in their thinking about women’s roles as they did about racial reconciliation after previous segregationist attitudes.

“I think it’s a Frankenstein monster that’s going to rise up and eat them in the long run,” he predicted.

DEA END RNS