{"id":4962,"date":"2005-08-13T09:55:12","date_gmt":"2005-08-13T13:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=4962"},"modified":"2005-08-13T09:55:12","modified_gmt":"2005-08-13T13:55:12","slug":"women-wearing-pants-in-church-its-an-abomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/women-wearing-pants-in-church-its-an-abomination\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Women wearing pants in church? It’s an abomination!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

Aside from the fact that their ideas are insane, one reason I don’t trust fundamentalist Christians to run the government is that they fight over really dumb things.<\/p>\n

Case in point: Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va. This institution of higher education for home-schooled kids founded by right-wing “Wizard of Oz” opponent and one-time Virginia lieutenant governor wannabee Michael Farris just canned a low-level library clerk because he believes you have to be baptized to go to Heaven.<\/p>\n

Jeremy Hunley was forced out for spreading this heresy among the student population at the school. A member of the Church of Christ, Hunley had the gall to believe that, at a religious college, he could actually talk about his religion.<\/p>\n

I should note that Hunley did more than talk. He distributed fliers inviting students to his church. The fliers, The Washington Post reported<\/a>, made it clear that baptism is essential for salvation.<\/p>\n

Farris says no way to that. He’s sure you can get into Heaven without first having been dunked in some water. Reported The Post, “Although most of Patrick Henry’s students and faculty members — perhaps all — have been baptized, they believe the act is a symbol of obedience to God and not essential to be saved, Farris said.”<\/p>\n

Sometimes I think it’s just human nature to fight and disagree. Liberal organizations have certainly had their share of schisms over the years. But I have to say, the fundamentalists have got this down to an art form. After all, when you are absolutely certain that your ideas come directly from God, there’s little room for compromise.
\n
\nThe fun starts when two sides, both absolutely convinced their positions come directly from God’s pipeline, reach opposite conclusions. Who wins? 500 years ago it would have been whichever side could muster the more powerful army. These days we just get more schisms.<\/p>\n

Pick up a directory of American religions and read about the history of our major faith traditions. They’ve all had them. They still have them. A sensible person would look at this and conclude, “This is evidence that holy books are obscure and open to different interpretations.” Fundamentalists look at and conclude, “We right, and everyone else is wrong.”<\/p>\n

This might be funny if it were just an internecine dispute at some cracker college. Alas, the young minds Farris has rescued from Hunley’s heresy are determined to affect your life. Where do they go after leaving Patrick Henry College? Many of them drive to the east and end up in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

As The Post put it, “Graduates have gone on to plum jobs on Capitol Hill and in the White House.”<\/p>\n

The only thing positive I can see about this is that the dogmatists of Patrick Henry will, once in D.C., encounter perhaps the only more dogmatic, pig-headed, “facts-be-damned” stay-the-course-even-when-it’s-an-abject-failure force in the universe: the Bush administration. With luck, they’ll be so busy fighting each other they’ll never get around to the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo Aside from the fact that their ideas are insane, one reason I don’t trust fundamentalist Christians to run the government is that they fight over really dumb things. Case in point: Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va. This institution of higher education for home-schooled kids founded by right-wing “Wizard of Oz” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}