In Defense of Paige Patterson

What!!!!! 

But wait. It might be worthwhile to consider the man. 

Because if the reports are true you can say this about Paige Patterson: his behavior over his career as a pastor was completely consistent, and completely consistent with an unwavering commitment to the teaching of scripture. 

After all, what would Paul do? Would Paul ever counsel a woman to divorce an abusive husband? That wouldn’t have even been a possibility in Paul’s time. He would have told the man to behave better. That is clear. So would Dr. Patterson.  

What about reporting sexual abuse to the authorities. Well Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, as well as Paul were pretty clear that conflicts between Christians, not least husbands and wives, need to be resolved inside the Christian community, with excommunication as a last resort. (And I note, that doesn’t do much for the woman.) And this was completely consistent with 1st century Jewish, and indeed subsequent Rabbinic Jewish teaching. When you live under military occupation you don’t go to the occupiers for justice. 

And it doesn’t take much to see that from the time Patterson helped lead the Southern Baptists into their fundamentalist desert that they weren’t going back to the fleshpots of contemporary American culture for either sustenance or justice. 

What I’ve noted above about scripture is hardly news. Dr. Patterson’s problem wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t lived so long. Anytime up to the 1980’s or even 1990’s  his advice would have been the consensus among conservative Christians. It probably remains the consensus in many churches outside the US. Indeed I know first hand it is the consensus among some Methodist Christians. Go back a century it would have been the consensus of all Christians. 

What changed wasn’t Paige Patterson, what changed was Western society and its understanding of the personhood of men and women, and thus how they should relate to one another. Grant girls and women their own autonomous personhood apart from fathers, brothers, and husbands, and everything changes about both their rights (to not be treated like objects) and their responsibilities (to care for their their own well being even if it means turning their husband in to the police.) 

Now I know you are thinking that the Bible says that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between male and female. In fact if you look there is a lot in the Bible to suggest that the traditional patriarchy was misguided in relation to the gift and demand of God Reign in Jesus Christ. But at least for 1900 years no one saw that in the Bible. 

What changed, and this is the problem for all who look for security and stability in the authority of scripture, was the social context. The Bible did not teach us that women were full human persons independent of the patriarchy. We Christians learned it only through the interchange between the Church and our rapidly changing culture - sparked by new ideas about humanity forged out of the Enlightenment. Only then could we see in the Bible what had been there all along. 

If we are serious about our theology of revelation and inspiration we must recognize that the distinction between natural revelation and special revelation isn’t adequate. Revelation isn’t just present in nature and the scriptures. It is present in society and culture.The Holy Spirit doesn’t just speak through magnificent sunsets, towering mountains, and the words of prophets and apostles. She speaks through ever-deepening insights about what it means to be human that arise in the evolution of human culture. 

Until we get that we’ll find that instead of being led by the Spirit into a greater understanding of Christ’s Reign we’ll be kicked by the Spirit, one Paige Patterson at a time, into God’s Reign. 

There is an interesting case study unfolding at this very moment in a Irving Bible Church. The elders of the church were pushed to reexamine the question of whether women could be elders in the church. (http://s3.amazonaws.com/ibcmedia/media/docs/women_ministry_IBC.pdf?mtime=20151124213203) They were conscious and honest (more than most conservative Christians) that in its efforts to be faithful to scripture the church had erred over the centuries in its understanding of God’s Reign. So they carefully studied the question of women in leadership and concluded: “the New Testament seems to imply that eldership is reserved for men.” 

I love that word “seems.” It is (or would be) a tectonic shift the thinking for most conservative Christian groups. It is the recognition that Christians might make mistakes when it comes to interpreting scripture. That indeed they mighthear the voice of the Holy Spirit in some place other than a group of men (or even men and women) huddled over their “textus receptus” discussing for the ten thousandth time the meaning of “the original Greek.” They might hear the Holy Spirit in the vast movements of human liberation that have emerged outside the Church, but are every bit as much a realm of revelation as scripture or nature. 

Would that every statement emerging in the ongoing United Methodist debates began with “it seems.” That might just be the measure of humility and openness to the leading of the Spirit that we need.