2.1 2.2 creation and the fall  (Page 2/3)

Asked in 1900 to describe "woman's sphere," one Baptist admitted, "There is probably no phase of practical religion on which those who wanted to know and teach the truth have taken more opposite positions or expressed more divergent views." BS, November 1, 1900, p. 2.

His advice was to look for an "underlying law" that governed all passages bearing on a particular subject. In the case of women, he declared the underlying law to be the "mutual dependence of the sexes in matters of human endeavor." That mutuality was not between equals, but was one in which "man is the God-appointed principal and woman is the God-appointed helper or assistant." He based his opinion on the verse that made clear "the purpose for which woman was created": to be a helpmeet for man.

God did not create man merely for man's existence sake, or that he might occupy a place in the activities of God's creatures. The females among the beasts were not called helps meet for the males, but when it came to the creation of man on whom should be laid the responsibilities and obligations growing out of his special endowments and his relation to God and the rest of God's creation, his wife was called his help meet. In meeting these responsibilities and fulfilling these obligations man's capacities and powers are such, his limitations and aptitudes are such that he needs another being so specially endowed as to be the help answering to him. That fact is not only taught in the Scriptures, but it is taught by the universal observation and experience of the race. Woman has also her limitations, and every wise woman recognizes that fact and in whatever she undertakes seeks the competent help of some man. Ibid.

This God-given ranking was believed by some to apply in every instance, implying that women were innately inferior. "A very casual reading of the Scriptures,” one writer explained, "will show that when in the past a significant thing was to be done for the Kingdom, God raised up a man to do it, and if he couldn't find a man he raised up a woman.” BS, October 17, 1912, p. 1.

The emphasis, however, was more often given to the assisting, non-initiating role of women, rather than to their basic inferiority. When acting in her "natural position," a woman would "honor man" and, even better, "help him honor himself and God." BS, November 8, 1900, p. 3. The same theme echoed in such statements as "the sisters are given to us to be helpers." BS, October 22, 1903, p. 3. In 1917 another writer affirmed that the Christian woman "should ever act consistently with the leadership of man and her position as help-mate." BS, October 18, 1917, p. 30.

The same secondary, helping role was applied to the women's organization in relation to the church; in fact, the official name adopted in 1890 by the Southern Baptist women's group was "Woman's Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist convention." Opposition to the movement arose, some felt, from men who did not understand that the organic connection of the WMU with the convention was that of a "subordinate organization." BS, May 19, 1892, p. 7. This appeasing fact actually marked the Southern Baptist group as distinctive among women's missionary endeavors. Norman W. Cox, ed., Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958), II, 1506.