{"id":3724,"date":"2008-09-17T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-17T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/09\/palin-pick-helps-change-attitudes-toward-women\/"},"modified":"2009-08-22T14:47:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-22T20:47:00","slug":"palin-pick-helps-change-attitudes-toward-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/09\/palin-pick-helps-change-attitudes-toward-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Palin pick helps change attitudes toward women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Contrary to what many on the left are saying, the Sarah Palin<\/a> pick has the potential to positively and dramatically shift attitudes toward women in this country. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Those who say otherwise apparently don\u2019t understand how John McCain\u2019s<\/a> selecting Palin to be the second female vice-presidential candidate in America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>\u2019s history challenges a huge number of Americans to think outside the box in which they live.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Many among the GOP base of religious, conservative voters attend churches in which women aren\u2019t 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\u2019t because of the social moderate at the top of the ticket.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

If they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

So many who aren\u2019t 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\u2019s nuclear arsenal and the authority to make decisions that will shape the future of the planet.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve scoured the Internet to try to find the answer and, as an active member of an evangelical church, I\u2019ve 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<\/a> and to their husbands at home<\/a> reason that the Bible requires female submission only in spiritual matters, not matters of state.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In my view, that\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Different opinions<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

A recent article from Religion News Service<\/a> quotes Tony Perkins<\/a>, the president of the Family Research Council and a Southern Baptist, as saying Palin was a \u201cbrilliant pick\u201d and using the \u201cIt\u2019s not a spiritual role\u201d argument to reason that the Bible verses he takes literally don\u2019t apply to government service.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But Jane Hansen Hoyt, who leads Aglow International<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cI personally believe that from the beginning — and I\u2019m going back to the third chapter of Genesis… the role of the woman was very strong because that\u2019s when God said he would send a help to the man,\u201d the article quoted Hoyt as saying. \u201cWell, it wasn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

A very public debate<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Clearly, there was already a wide range of thinking among the religious on the roles of women. But Palin\u2019s 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 \u201cpositioned themselves as staunch advocates for women\u2019s leadership in political life — until Sarah Palin,\u201d wrote David P. Gushee in USA Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

About 100 million Americans are evangelicals, and though it\u2019s unclear how many of them attend churches where women can\u2019t be pastors, the number is certainly in the tens of millions. And that number doesn\u2019t account for other churches, including the Catholic and Mormon churches, in which women can\u2019t fill top leadership roles.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

While many women on the left may disagree with Palin\u2019s politics, the cultural effect of her candidacy has the potential to be huge. Let me make one thing clear: I\u2019m not advocating for or against the McCain\/Palin ticket, and I\u2019m certainly one who believes elections should be more about policy issues than cultural effects. I\u2019m 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\u2019s presidential candidate, would go a long way toward changing attitudes toward women in America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019t understand how John McCain\u2019s selecting Palin to be the second female vice-presidential candidate in America\u2019s history challenges a huge number of Americans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-haussamen-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}