As anybody who pays attention to Southern Baptist politics must know by now, Southern Baptist biggie Paige Patterson, the head of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a leader of the so-called Conservative Resurgence, was under intense fire last week for callous advice he gave to women being beat-up by their husbands. There were strong rumors that the seminary’s Board was seriously considering firing him but, in the event, Patterson claimed it was all lies and survived.
For the record, I think Patterson’s take-it-and-pray advice is very bad and renders him wholly unfit for the company of decent adults. He belongs on the outskirts of polite society — with the wife-beaters and The Donald, say.
But a grad student who issued a tweet sympathizing with an article critical of Patterson lost his seminary job.
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which does not ordain women but offers them classes in homemaking, this week fired a PhD seminary student from his $40,000 job for simply tweeting about the Patterson debate, telling him he was “indiscreet” and that his decision to speak publicly about the dispute “does not exhibit conduct becoming a follower of Jesus” and shows he was not properly deferring to “those placed in authority over you.”
Well … I dunno. Granted, I am extremely wicked, so perhaps I have misunderstood the Inerrant Bible, or there is some nuance in the story that’s accessible to only theologians, but doesn’t it say that Jesus overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the Temple? Because they were mulcting the pious?
So I’m having a hard time seeing how a rather bland criticism of Patterson is indiscreet and not following Jesus, who seems to sometimes have been annoyingly outspoken, though I guess I’d have to agree that it fails to show the deference due a Mighty Stained-Glass Holy Man such as Patterson.