Christian homemaking at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Posted by 3Dsound at Tuesday, August 21, 2007 4:47 AM and is filed under Homemaking,Southern Baptist,christian fundamentalism,Christian religious law,Bible Study,sola scriptura,Women 
Fundamentalism (updated below)
Christian religious law: Rose French (10-Aug-07), Seminary to offer women a degree in homemaking, The Seattle Times, online at seattletimes
In Ephesians 5, Paul gives us a drive-by picture of authentic Christian spirituality, and for those of his readers who might not be ready for that, he also describes the operational particulars of hierarchal authority in the church, which right-wing Christians have interpreted as a basis for religious law.
First, listen to Paul as he finds the words to express the Christian spiritual experience:
"be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;"
And then, a few sentences later, Paul explains how our corporal bodies, along with our marriage and community all contribute to manifesting our relationship with God:
"For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church."
I'm getting far afield from the topic at hand, which is the iinauguration of Christian homemaking courses for women only at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, but the fact is, those courses legitimize themselves by claiming to adhere to the most material of Paul's words in Ephesians 5:
"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord."
The Seminary's courses, in all of their codification of Christian religious law (not to mention their calculated and venal debasement of women), are an example of how sola scriptura plays into the hands of those whose psalms and hymns are sung unto themselves and their own self-righteousness. There's more meat to Ephesians 5 than women's submission to men.
UPDATE, October 28, 2007: In addition to Ephesians 5, there are numerous scriptural sources that conservatives cite in concocting their religious law governing women. Titus 2:3-5 is a particular favorite and a workhorse for the cause:
"The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."
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