The headline read “Church Fires Teacher for Being Female”. It was about a member of the First Baptist Church in Watertown, N.Y. who was 85 years old, a member of the church for 60 years and a Sunday school teacher there for 54 years.
The Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who looked like a young twit on T.V. said that he takes the Bible literally and in the Pauline Epistle (Timothy 1) women are forbidden to teach men, therefore he fired her.
Here again I have to comment about taking the Bible literally, in this case the New Testament and especially the writings of Paul.
First and foremost, most if not all, historians consider the Epistle to Timothy as well as the other “pastoral” Epistles as NOT having been written by Paul.
The Epistles basically instruct a community how to structure and run a church and how to behave, etc. Since women were an integral part of early Christianity and many rose to positions of leadership (bishops), a male backlash was inevitable.
The Epistle of Timothy was written by just such a male that did not want competition from females. He used Paul’s name to add legitimacy to the Epistle. Early Christians could not tell that it was not Paul’s letter and included it in the canon of the Bible (became part of the Bible/New Testament).
People that don’t know the history of the Bible; who wrote it and why, like the twit Rev. LaBouf, can needlessly cause harm and create discord because of their ignorance.
I think the media and the general public’s adverse reaction to this senseless act of making an old lady that has devoted her life to this church, feel like a second-class human being because she is female, will expose the literal reading of the Bible as absurd. He also did not act too Christ-like, did he?
Janusz
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