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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Palin predicament?

John Loftus has posted a summary of a questionnaire by David Gushee:

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-predicament-for.html

The point of the questionnaire is whether Evangelical supporters of Palin are being inconsistent in their support of a female candidate for vice president.

Is it now your view that God can call a woman to serve as president of the United States?

The phrasing of the question is tendentious since it assumes that God calls individuals to be president. Why would we assume that? In the past, God called men and women to be prophets. He occasionally called a man to be king, although succession was ordinarily dynastic.

But there’s no theological reason to treat the presidency as a divine calling.

Are you prepared to renounce publicly any further claim that God's plan is for men rather than women to exercise leadership in society, the workplace and public life?

This question is also tendentious because it assumes a change in position. What I now believe, in contrast to what I used to believe. But I can’t very well renounce a position I never had.

All things being equal, I think it’s better to have men in positions of power. Dennis Prager has written a good article on the subject:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0905/prager091305.php3

All things considered, some women are better than some men in positions of power. For one thing, some men have an effeminate temperament or an effeminate ideology. They don’t bring masculine virtues to public office.

Obama is soft and dovish. Palin is much tougher. Margaret Thatcher is another example.

Deborah is the paradigmatic exception to the rule.

Would Palin be acceptable as vice president because she would still be under the ultimate authority of McCain as president, like the structure of authority that occurs in some of your churches?

Palin’s acceptability as vice president isn’t contingent on her subordination to a male president.

Have you fully come to grips with the fact that if after his election McCain were to die, Palin would be in authority over every male in the USA as president?

This question contains some faulty assumptions.

i) Presidential authority is limited to presidential prerogatives. In a system of popular sovereignty, authority is ultimately vested in the electorate, and not our elected officials.

ii) Does a president have authority over every male in the US? The executive branch is not the only branch of gov’t. Does the president have authority over congressmen or Supreme Court justices (not all of whom are men)?

Likewise, a president doesn’t have unlimited authority over mayors or governors.

If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women's leadership in church life?

i) I don’t agree that God calls either men or women to the presidency.

ii) It has no implications for church office. That’s determined by whatever the Bible has to say on the subject.

Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?

Whether a woman ought to serve as pastor depends on the polity of the particular church or denomination. How much authority does the pastor have? That varies from one denomination to another.

Can a woman teach? I think so. Is teaching an exercise of authority? No.

Can a woman exercise church discipline? No. That would be an exercise of authority over men.

Megachurches often have a number of pastors who assume different roles. Any answer, yes or no, would depend on the way in which a pastorate or multiple-pastorate is structured.

For example, it’s not a bad thing for a woman to counsel other women. Indeed, it can be a problem for a man to counsel women (one on one).

Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family?

She’s under the authority of her husband, although that’s a qualified authority. A husband can abuse his authority.

If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?

I don’t see that her husband’s authority spills over to her vice presidential authority, or vice versa. A 4-star admiral has authority in the naval chain-of-command. That doesn’t spill over to the civilian sector, or the air force chain-of-command.

Do you believe that women carry primary responsibility for the care of children in the home?

i) No, I don’t think that a woman has primary responsibility for child-rearing. Both mothers and fathers have a distinctive and indispensable role to play in child-rearing.

Indeed, Christian conservatives have been complaining for some time now that feminism marginalizes the role of men in the lives of their children.

ii) Even if I disapproved of the Palin’s domestic arrangements, that’s irrelevant to my voting criteria. I’m not electing a president or vice president to be a role model. I vote for a candidate based on his (or her) policy positions.

Suppose I had a military operation to carry out. I could choose a more competent general who’s a womanizer, or I could choose a less competent general who’s a wonderful family man. Which general should I choose?

I should choose the general who’s better at completing the mission. The fact that he’s a womanizer who will burn in hell when he dies is irrelevant to my military criteria. I’m not responsible for his sexual ethics. I am responsible for the success or failure of the mission.

13 comments:

  1. On the question:

    "If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?"

    I think what they might be getting at (I'm playing devil's advocate here) is, what if Mr. Palin was to order his wife to exert her office in a certain way? Since wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ.

    FYI - I am not asking this question as an antagonistic unbeliever, but a Christian.

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  2. In her official capacity, she would be answerable, not to her husband, but to the electorate.

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  3. Good points Steve.

    I didn't understand the last part of the last question concerning distributing benefits based on need?

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  4. "what if Mr. Palin was to order his wife to exert her office in a certain way?"

    No wife has to do anything her husband says whatever.

    If my wife works in a bank, she doesn't have to "submit" to me if I tell her to bring home people's saftey deposit boxes.

    Even in the home, if I tell her to slip our children antifreeze, she doesn't have to submit.

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  5. >All things considered, some women are better than some men in positions of power. For one thing, some men have an effeminate temperament or an effeminate ideology. They don’t bring masculine virtues to public office.<

    So Sarah Palin may be better - whatever you mean by "better" - than some men in positions of power, but only if she is the more masculine of those competing for office?

    Are you claiming Palin would be "better" than Obama because she's more masculine than he is?

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  6. We are discussing similar questions at Complegalitarian, minus the atheist ire.

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  7. Dave,

    Care to justify how you got the "only if" out of Steve's comment?

    I would have thought the "all things considered" helpful in digesting the comment.

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  8. Great post and answers to the questionnaire. Although Sarah Palin provides somewhat of a quandary for us complementarians the bottom line is that we collectively as Christians have ceded the culture to the secularists. (The mega-church complex evangelical mania has contributed to this by removing Christian influence from the culture but I digress.) Now that they control academia, arts, entertainment and most governmental entities they have created the rules for the playground. Palin is a candidate that allows Christians to use the liberals and secularist's own rule book against them. In the event she were a male with the same background then some of the attacks they would use against him would be more effective based on their rules. For instance, it has been said of Sarah Palin that she talks and walks the pro-life position. If a Godly Christian male candidate were to have her same views on abortion he would be labeled even more of an extremist and the argument would be compounded because he can never live and walk the pro-life philosophy by their definition. Because by their definition or rules (political correctness) the only one that can understand the abortion decision is the one that can experience it. Therefore Sarah by being a candidate who is a woman and who made the decision for life not only philosophically but in practice turns their own political correctness rules against them.

    John Loftus and other liberals are now because of the success Sarah Palin’s candidacy are going to our rule book, the Bible, or more accurately what they perceive our rule book states on the restrictions of a woman’s position to disqualify her candidacy. They are going to struggle greatly with your statement and our theological belief that "All things being equal, I think it’s better to have men in positions of power." It is going to seem to them to be hypocritical of us to support her while holding to that position. What they do not understand is that we are not being pragmatic in supporting her candidacy but a realization on our part that we have failed in providing the male leadership that is scripturally normative. They are going to be stunned that we can see her in the vein of a modern day Deborah and our response should be and will be to produce more male leaders in the future who meet the scriptural normative requirement rather than oppose her leadership. Therefore on Biblical review the quandary for us complementarians evaporates and we find ourselves free to support the McCain-Palin ticket and the charge of hypocrisy.

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  9. DAVE SAID:

    “So Sarah Palin may be better - whatever you mean by ‘better’…”

    Better on social issues, better on national security, &c.

    “Are you claiming Palin would be ‘better’ than Obama because she's more masculine than he is?”

    More like the difference between a strong woman and a weak man.

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  10. Palin is a candidate that allows Christians to use the liberals and secularist's own rule book against them.

    Quite right Scotto!

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  11. Speaking of authority, what is church authority supposed to look like anyway? I was a member of a group that put a heavy emphasis on shepherding individuals one-on-one, and it got pretty bad with the amount of control the leaders had in the personal lives of younger christians. I'm still reeling from the effects.

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  12. The short answer is that a pastor shouldn’t be making personal decisions for his parishioners. Rather, he should be educating them to make decisions for themselves.

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