News from the U.S. Office of Ridiculous Bullshit: Gospel mag pulled because it has female pastors on the cover

Treated like a dirty magazine.

Besides the whole "pray the gay away" bullshit and the "everyone else is going to hell unless you follow our way" ideology, the Southern Baptist Convetion also suffers from the belief that women can't be messengers of the Gospel. Which, btw, from reading, actually says a lot of things about treating poor and oppressed people well -- which is toooootally incendiary (I think I understand even more why Jesus was crucified, beyond the whole salvation thing. He was a political threat.) and would have him labeled as a pinko commie.

Speaking as a nephew of a woman who will be ordained as a minister (at least in the Methodist Church), this really pisses me off.

Courtesy of the AJC:

Smiling women on the cover of a slick magazine. Sold from under the counter. Must request it from store clerk.

That’s not something a buyer would typically find in a Christian bookstore. Not unless it’s one of the more than 100 Lifeway Christian Bookstores across the United States, including about six in metro Atlanta.

Gospel Today, the Fayetteville-published magazine, was pulled off the racks by the bookstores’ owner, the Southern Baptist Convention. The problem? The five smiling women on the cover are women of the cloth — church pastors.

Southern Baptist polity says that’s a role reserved for men.



And in the Political Year of the Woman, from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin, the publisher of the mag makes a good point:

Teresa Hairston, owner of Gospel Today, whose glossy pages feature upbeat articles about health, living, music and ministry, said she discovered by e-mail that the September/October issue of the magazine had been demoted to the realm of the risque.

“It’s really kind of sad when you have people like [Gov.] Sarah Palin and [Sen.] Hillary Clinton providing encouragement and being role models for women around the world that we have such a divergent opinion about women who are able to be leaders in the church,” Hairston said. “I was pretty shocked.”


The apostle Paul's known problems with women notwithstanding, I would think Jesus would want the Good News spread by whatever means, even if the messengers have boobs.