Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Pastor Fires Sunday School Teacher After 50 Years

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. Baptist preacher has publicly defended himself for firing a female Sunday School teacher after more than 50 years on the job because he believes the Bible bans women from teaching men.

Watertown First Baptist Church Pastor Tim LaBouf, also a city council member in Watertown, N.Y., said women could fulfill any role or responsibility they wanted to -- outside the church.

"My belief is that the qualifications for both men and women teaching spiritual matters in a church setting end at the church door, period," LaBouf said in a statement on the church Web site (http://www.nnyinfo.com/firstbaptist).

LaBouf and the church board fired Mary Lambert, 81, earlier this month in a letter that cited the scriptural qualifications for Sunday School teachers, Lambert said.

"They quote First Timothy Two, 11-14: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent," Lambert said, reading from the letter.

For full article click here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a trip! Now I don't know if it should come to firing the old lady for teaching a S.S. class. I prefer to have women teaching men, but it seems that this could have been handled differently.

Anonymous said...

better put the not in there. Women should NOT teach men, only other women.

Exist-Dissolve said...

This article, in its brevity, encapsulates precisely everything that is wrong with evangelicalism in America today.

Anonymous said...

It is interesting that there is a link to the American Baptist Convention.

I learned this morning from a previous reading that women only began being preachers and the like in the mid twentieth century.

Scott said...

"...but it seems that this could have been handled differently."

Yeah, if they were real Baptists, they would have stoned her.