Posted on 07/09/2007 9:01:04 AM PDT by Between the Lines
Starting this fall Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will offer a program in Christian homemaking, the seminary's president said Tuesday. "We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God's word for the home and the family," seminary President Paige Patterson said in his prepared report to the Southern Baptist Convention this week in San Antonio, Texas.
According to the seminary Web site, the bachelor-of-arts in humanities degree, with a concentration in homemaking, will be offered through the seminary's undergraduate college program.
"The College at Southwestern endeavors to prepare women to model the characteristics of the godly woman as outlined in Scripture," a description of the program reads. "This is accomplished through instruction in homemaking skills, developing insights into home and family while continuing to equip women to understand and engage the culture of today."
Course work includes three hours of "general homemaking," three hours on "the value of a child," seven hours of "design and apparel"--including a four-hour "clothing construction with lab"--seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation and a three-hour course on the "Biblical Model for the Home and Family."
Responding to a question at the SBC annual meeting about the program, Patterson said many wives of future preachers have said, "We need to know in a day when homemaking is no longer honored whether or not it would be possible for us to have a course of study that would lead to a degree in homemaking."
"It is homemaking for the sake of the church and the ministry and homemaking for the sake of our society," Patterson said. "If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed."
The seminary's trustees were told about the new program last fall. It wasn't mentioned in news stories or the seminary's press release, but a Baptist blogger critical of Patterson's administration reported he "nearly shot Diet Coke out of my nose" when he heard the recommendation.
Trying to imagine how such a degree falls under the umbrella of the institutional mission of a theological seminary, blogger Benjamin Cole dismissed the idea as "quite silly."
"A seminary degree in cookie-baking is about as useful as an M.Div. in automotive repair, if you ask me," Cole said. After the fall trustee meeting, Cole proceeded to parody what he nicknamed the "Mrs. Degree" in 10 blogs between Oct. 30 and Nov. 21.
The new undergraduate degree is in addition to an existing 13-hour program of seminary studies for student wives and women's ministries concentrations in both the master-of-divinity and master-of-arts-in-Christian-education seminary degrees.
Dorothy Patterson, wife of the seminary president and professor of theology in women's studies, is the only woman faculty member currently teaching in Southwestern's School of Theology.
Another, former Old Testament languages professor Sheri Klouda, sued the seminary in March, claiming she was dismissed from her job simply because she is a woman. The chairman of the seminary's board of trustees was quoted as saying Klouda's unanimous election by trustees five years earlier, under leadership of Patterson's predecessor, was a "momentary lax of parameters."
Located in Fort Worth, Texas, Southwestern isn't the only Southern Baptist seminary encouraging ministers' wives to serve in traditional roles. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., offers a 13-hour certificate of ministry studies through its Seminary Wives Institute that includes "essentials" like "God's plan for marriage," child-rearing and shopping on a budget.
"At Southern Seminary, we recognize the need for God-called ministers' wives to be prepared for ministry," says a program description. "We believe that a minister's wife needs to be educated and equipped as she and her husband prepare for service in the churches and beyond."
An accompanying Women's Ministry Institute at Southern Seminary prepares women to minister to other women in the local church. Both programs are offered through Southern Seminary's Boyce College and headed up by Mary Mohler, wife of Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler.
Mary Mohler and Dorothy Patterson were the only two women serving on a seven-member committee that drafted a family amendment added to the Baptist Faith & Message in 1998. That article proscribed the proper role for a wife as "to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."
The family article made headlines nationwide. The New York Times quoted Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics as commenting: ''They hope to make June Cleaver the biblical model for motherhood, despite numerous biblical references to women who worked outside the home.''
Two years later Southern Baptists updated the Baptist Faith & Message again to specify, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."
Southwestern Seminary's online catalogue says the seminary introduces women "to the marketplace of ideas, including both complementarian and egalitarian positions" so they are "thoroughly equipped to give an articulate and well-reasoned evangelical response to the feministic ideology of the age."
In addition to its programs for women, Southern Seminary in Louisville also houses The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The Council exists to counter "feminist egalitarianism"--the view that men and women are equal in the church and home--with "the noble Biblical vision of sexual complementarity," which holds that men and women are of equal worth, but God ordained for males to be the head of both the home and the church.
Last year Southern Seminary named the Council's executive director, Randy Stinson, as dean of its School of Leadership and Church Ministry.
My wife has bought into this women need to work thing. I make more than enough to support the family but she feels the need to work to show her worth. It causes big fights when I bring up that the ones that suffer are the kids and my house looks like crap. Her being a practicing psychologist who specializes in major mental disorders but has had training in family counseling I find it paradoxical that she cannot see some of the issues that arise from non-nuclear families. What do I know I am only a layman ( with a technical Master’s degree ) I am told.
So I get to plug along and make sure I take off work when the kids have a function to get to so she can work to be able to buy more junk.
This is going to raise the hackles on all the feminazis.
It raises the hackles on me. Seems like a way to make money off of women. A degree in homemaking? Why on Earth does anyone need a college education for that?
A woman should know that sort of thing before college. I got my degree in computer science. It makes money until I’m ready to be a stay-at-home mom. No need to study at a university for that.
I think women who want to be stay-at-home mothers should learn something they can use to provide for themselves in a pinch. Get Mom or the mother-in-law or some nice older lady from church teach how to bake pies, spend the tuition money on an accounting degree or another way to feed the kids if the husband gets run over.
And homemaking skills are not really being passed on from mother to daughter the way they used to be - in much the same way that construction and repair skills are not being passed along from father to son.
Thank God I’m not a pastor’s wife. Even the term “pastor’s wife” is degrading, like she has no identity apart from him.
Maybe your wife has dreams to pursue and talents to use, just like (gasp) a man?
I could see having a course, but an entire major? Sounds like a Christian Women’s Studies major to me- with the same amount of usefulness to employers after college.
And Computer Science can lead to a viable work-at-home contracting position. Even if I go home and never “work” again, my degree is paid for, unlike (I would think) many of these “Homemaking Majors”. And I do have the potential to earn extra money later.
I got my BS/CS in 2004 too. Love the stuff.
A certificate program or a 2 year Associate of arts program would be much more reasonable!
She chose this path after kids were born and after saying she would wait until kids are in late teens. She said after the 2nd baby, “I am too bored just playing mom.” So she went back to grad school.
I doubt the thought of her talents came into play. Albeit she is very good at what she does it was an after thought and breech of promise because she was bored.
It is sad that you too feel this is okay behavior inside a two-parent family where the man makes a good living, no wonder our country is on a downhill path in respects to family morals and culture.
A lot of Baby boomer mommies never spent the time teaching their children how to keep a house in running order. They spent their time teaching their daughters that they have to go to college, get a degree and work for a living just the same way as their sons. So many women have to learn these things on their own, hire someone to do it for them or decide they don't care if their house is clean.
I think it is an over-stretch to offer a Bachelor in this discipline.
Personally I think that everyone should know these things, but it isn't being passed on anymore. In our neighborhood of 50 homes there is only one other family that knows how to actually cook (not just opening a can or from a box) and most are boomers.
All three of our children were raised knowing how to cook, clean, sew and do the laundry. Yes, even my son. They might not have appreciated it then, but now that they are adults they see it through a different light.
Small wonder - you're strong point certainly isn't diplomacy.
It was the same when I was younger. I learned how to cook & clean, use all sorts of power tools, change the oil on a car, and even (gasp!) sew! Somebody had to attach the patches to my Boy Scout uniform and mend holes in the knees of my pants -- after showing me how once or twice, my mom said I was on my own for that kind of stuff.
Resumed my career when the kids entered school, but I still did the cleaning and cooking thing. Last year I was forced into an early retirement and at the same time my daughter and her husband had decided that she needed to work. He works full time and is going to collage to be a pharmacist. So, we decided that I would take care of my three granddaughters. Now I am a stay at home Paw Paw and loving every minute of it. The wife still works and hates it. ; )
Oh, absolutely men should learn the same skills. I was just referring to women who desire to be homemakers. If they are motivated enough to take college classes, they are motivated enough to find a “professional homemaker” and apprentice themselves.
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