Contrary to what many on the left are saying, the Sarah Palin pick has the potential to positively and dramatically shift attitudes toward women in this country.
Those who say otherwise apparently don’t understand how John McCain’s selecting Palin to be the second female vice-presidential candidate in
Many among the GOP base of religious, conservative voters attend churches in which women aren’t allowed to preach or fill a number of other leadership roles. And yet, many of those same people have become the most excited supporters of the McCain/Palin campaign, and it isn’t because of the social moderate at the top of the ticket.
If they’re successful in electing McCain, GOP base voters are setting Palin up to be the likely Republican nominee for president in four or eight years. And she would immediately become the most powerful person in the world if something were to happen to McCain sooner.
So many who aren’t willing to be subject to the leadership of women in church or at home are suddenly eager to give a woman the highest job in the world, control of America’s nuclear arsenal and the authority to make decisions that will shape the future of the planet.
Why?
I’ve scoured the Internet to try to find the answer and, as an active member of an evangelical church, I’ve spoken with some of my friends about this. The reasons are varied. Some say women can lead as well as men, and point out that many moderate and even some otherwise conservative churches allow women to be pastors. But others who cling literally and vehemently to New Testament passages about women submitting to men in church and to their husbands at home reason that the Bible requires female submission only in spiritual matters, not matters of state.
In my view, that’s quite a stretch of any interpretation of the relevant Biblical passages. What about women would make them capable of deciding whether to nuke another nation but not able to lead a Bible study in which men are taking part?
Different opinions
I watched a conversation on a cable news channel last week between a moderate evangelical woman and a male conservative pastor of a Southern megachurch. While she argued that women can lead as well as men, the pastor said women should be in the home raising children. They shouldn’t even have jobs, he said. Asked why he supports McCain/Palin, he said that the alternative is a liberal socialist, and putting a woman in the White House is the lesser of two evils.
A recent article from Religion News Service quotes Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and a Southern Baptist, as saying Palin was a “brilliant pick” and using the “It’s not a spiritual role” argument to reason that the Bible verses he takes literally don’t apply to government service.
But Jane Hansen Hoyt, who leads Aglow International, was quoted in the same article as saying that she is disappointed by other religious conservatives who are OK with women leading in politics but not in church.
“I personally believe that from the beginning — and I’m going back to the third chapter of Genesis… the role of the woman was very strong because that’s when God said he would send a help to the man,” the article quoted Hoyt as saying. “Well, it wasn’t just a help to cook his meals. It was a help to walk alongside him, even as we see John McCain and Sarah Palin walking side by side.”
A very public debate
Clearly, there was already a wide range of thinking among the religious on the roles of women. But Palin’s candidacy has sparked a fresh and very public debate and a rethinking of long-held beliefs. Conservative evangelicals who have reshaped the presidential race since McCain picked Palin have never “positioned themselves as staunch advocates for women’s leadership in political life — until Sarah Palin,” wrote David P. Gushee in USA Today.
About 100 million Americans are evangelicals, and though it’s unclear how many of them attend churches where women can’t be pastors, the number is certainly in the tens of millions. And that number doesn’t account for other churches, including the Catholic and Mormon churches, in which women can’t fill top leadership roles.
While many women on the left may disagree with Palin’s politics, the cultural effect of her candidacy has the potential to be huge. Let me make one thing clear: I’m not advocating for or against the McCain/Palin ticket, and I’m certainly one who believes elections should be more about policy issues than cultural effects. I’m just saying that the electing of a female vice president who has fired up conservative, religious voters, and the possible nomination of her four or eight years later to be the conservative party’s presidential candidate, would go a long way toward changing attitudes toward women in