Paige Patterson Disgraced by Southern Baptists about Advising Women

Paige Patterson Disgraced by Southern Baptists about Advising Women June 15, 2018

The Southern Baptist Convention is going on this week. They are the largest non-Catholic church denomination in the U.S., consisting of 15 million people. The big news for the convention has been that Vice President Mike Pence, an evangelical Christian, is going to be one of the speakers.

I lived in Houston, Texas, for almost forty years. So, being in the South, I’m quite familiar with Southern Baptists. In fact, I married one. I’ve had a lot of Southern Baptist friends in my life.

Another issue at the Southern Baptist Convention this year is that they will be discussing how the denomination treats women. And it involves Paige Patterson. One time he was the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He just got the boot as the long-time president of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. It is somewhat of a scandal, and the denomination is now in upheaval regarding the treatment of women.

I know Paige Patterson. (He wrote a positive journal review of my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia.) I’ve blogged about one time when we had dinner together at a fancy Houston restaurant. It was a very significant occasion for him. It’s a long story that I will try to make short.

Paige Patterson was an only child. His father was a Southern Baptist pastor. His family sometimes visited Israel as a vacation. Once when they did, and Paige was about ten years old, the family befriended a Palestinian boy they met in the streets of Jerusalem.

Eventually, Paige’s parents adopted that boy, and he became a fixture in their family back in Texas. So, Paige and this boy grew up together, just as though they were siblings. But when they became adults, the two men disagreed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the point in which they quit talking and seeing each other. In fact, Paige’s brother was the best man in PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s wedding.

David’s adopted brother’s original name was David Ahmad. He became a successful restaurateur in Houston. Paige and I had dinner in Ahmad’s restaurant. David and Paige reunited that evening at dinner for the first time in something like thirty years.

Patterson’s firing was due largely to some recorded comments he made during his ministry, much of it long ago. He advised women to remain in abusive marriages and suffer it. That is old school and thus chauvinistic. I never believed that was right. And Patterson did not advise such women to report their husband’s violence to the police. In fact, he encouraged them not to do it. Patterson thought he was being biblical in offering such advice.

The NT sometimes records Jesus’ advice about not divorcing. For example, in the first century Jews in Israel disagreed about reasons a man could have for divorcing his wife.  The school of Shammai said husbands could not divorce their wives unless they were guilty of adultery. But the school of Hillel said husbands could divorce their wives for just about any reason, including burning their dinner!

Jesus was asked about this. We read in the New Testament (NT), “Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?'” (Mark 10.2). Jesus answered by directing their attention to the Law of Moses. When Jesus’ disciples later asked him about this he said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (v. 11).

But Matthew records this conversation a little differently. He says the asked Jesus, “for any cause,” on the end of their question (Matt. 19.3). And in Jesus’ answer, Matthew adds, “except for unchastity.” So, the answer was, according to Matthew, “whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery” (v. 9).

I do not think there is a discrepancy here between Mark and Matthew. Rather, Matthew’s addition, “for any cause,” goes together with “except for unchastity,” both of which Mark omits. This needs to be pondered. Mark just doesn’t include the question about any reason. According to the Bible, there are legitimate reasons for divorce. But Christians should try to stay together and work things out. But what about violence and adultery? And there may be other comparable things or worse that require divorce.

Christians are mostly only familiar with the so-called “except clause” in Matthew. That is, the Bible allows divorce only in the case of adultery. Not so. The Bible commands husbands also to provide the necessities of life for their wives, commands conjugal rights for both parties in marriage, and requires the husband to protect his wife and family (Exodus 21.10-11; cf. Deuteronomy 24.1-4). To seriously neglect these, the wife has a right to divorce.

David Instone-Brewer is the Senior Research Fellow at Tyndale House Library in Cambridge University in England. He is a Christian specializing in rabbinic Judaism. I believe he is the world’s leading expert on what the Bible teaches about divorce and remarriage. See his two books on this subject at amazon.com: Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible and Divorce and Remarriage in the Church. He teaches that women who undergo serious physical abuse in marriage have a biblical right to divorce. He mines the Old Testament on a lot of this, most of which Christians don’t know. Any Christian involved in questions about these matters due their situation should get these books and read them.

As for Paige Patterson, I wish him well. But it does not seem to me he has repented as fully as he should about the reasons for his dismissal at the seminary.


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