1Pe 3:6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.
1Ti 2:12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
Sarah Palin's candidacy raises many theological contradictions.
The public enthrallment suggests anti-Christ which has already been alluded to in relation to Obama's meteoric rise.
The wedding of church to government reminds of Rev 17:5 And upon her forehead [was] a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
Has anyone asked Sarah who is in charge in her church and home when it comes to her life style choices?
Her husband is part Eskimo. I believe for hospitality they share their wives with visitors. Abraham put King Abimelech at risk of adultery by misleading him about Sarah.

It was John Knox, a Protestant Reformer and the founder of Presbyterianism, who wrote in his “First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate” that:

“To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely [an insult] to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equality and justice.”

As a side note, many of the more academic and theological texts for evangelicals are published under the John Knox seal — Westminister John Knox Press, a subsidiary of the Presbyterian Publishing Company. (Gary Dorrien's The Remaking of Evangelical Theology — Journals of the Evangelical Theological Society — Timothy Larsen's The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology — Timothy George's For all the Saints — just to name a few.)

In more recent times — the end of August — Voddie Baucham of Voddie Baucham Ministries wrote:

“…if Mr. McCain was pro-family, he would want to see Mrs. Palin at home taking care of her five children, not headed to Washington to be consumed by the responsibilities of being second in command to the most powerful man in the world (or serving as the Governor of Alaska for that matter).
“My heart breaks for her husband. Mrs. Palin is not even supposed to be the head of her own household (Eph. 5:22ff; Col. 3:18; Titus 2:5; 1 Peter 3:1-7), let alone the State of Alaska, or the United States Senate (The VP oversees the Senate). He should be shepherding her, but instead she is ruling over him (Rom 13:1-7; 1Pet 2:13-17). How difficult it must be for him to walk the fine line of bowing to the culture that is stealing his bride while still trying to love his wife and lead his family.
“My heart breaks for the so-called Christian right. All the usual subjects have been falling all over themselves to praise Mr. McCain and justify their blind allegiance to the Republican Party in an effort to secure more “pro-family” judges. They want to protect marriage from redefinition by the homosexual movement, and they are willing to redefine marriage (and motherhood) to do it.”

Albert Barnes in his Barnes' Notes on the Bible:

“This does not mean, of course, that they [women] are never to go abroad, but they are not to neglect their domestic affairs; they are not be better known abroad than at home; they are not to omit their own duties, and become 'busy-bodies' in the concerns of others.”

Doug Phillips wrote the following while taking Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America to task for touting Palin as a “woman of accomplishment who brings a fresh face to traditional values and models the type of woman most girls want to become”

“I am confident that Mrs. Palin is a delightful, sincere, thoughtful and capable woman with many commendable virtues. But in fairness, there is nothing 'traditional' about mothers of young children becoming career moms, chief magistrates, and leading nations of three hundred million, nor is this pattern the biblical ideal to which young women should aspire. At a time when motherhood and marriage is so under attack, the message Republicans are sending is this: Winning political elections is more important than the following proposition given by the Lord: “That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, [To be] discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed” (Titus 2:4-5).”

While there are many more examples, those final statements are, at least to me, the crux of the issue. No matter how many religious groups have embraced an overall “lifting up” of women, there have been limits. For instance, church sermons have been preached on how women should submit to their husbands, while also reminding husbands of their sacred duties to their wives. It's a two-way street, even if both genders are playing the roles as carved out by scripture — both individuals requiring and needing one another in order to build the home, better the society, etc. That being said, the limits on each role are mandated by scripture and cannot be escaped by those who intend to live their lives based on a strict biblical view.

In the final review, it isn't Palin who was changed by religion, but religion that has been changed by Palin and every otherwise strict biblical woman who has ventured outside of the home. Feminism — the belief that men and women are equals and not limited by specific roles according to their gender — has taken hold even in the evangelical and strict biblical communities.

As for the Wesleyan Church itself, I have nothing but respect and admiration for its historical contributions to the women's movement. I do find it ironic that you would point to the past 50 years as a time when the feminist movement became too radical for the group, since it was not the feminist movement that changed inasmuch as the Wesleyan movement. It was after the Civil War that Wesleyans became more interested in spiritualizing individuals than they were were in radical reform of society — a movement that bore the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Pilgrim Holiness Church and others, even impacting the Salvation Army. If I'm remember my theology studies correctly, it was in the in 1960s that the Wesleyan church merged with Baptist Reformists and the Pilgrim Holiness — a move that further pushed the group toward compassionate missions (which are to be applauded), but also placed added emphasis on the individual and his/her spirituality.

For example, the historical and cultural context of the passages she quoted from Exodus and Deuteronomy was that of a starkly patriarchal society. Even today, many Middle Eastern cultures maintain that women are closer to property than human. Throughout the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, though, women are placed on equal footing with men. For instance, Exodus 21 – almost immediately following the Ten Commandments – outlines a number of rules and regulations specifically designed to place women on the same level as men in the justice system and elsewhere, marking a clear departure from the tendencies of other Semitic cultures of the day, and there are similar passages throughout the entire book of Deuteronomy.

The problems for Ms. Waddington's supposition are only increased when she quotes passages from 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians. The context of those passages were specific instances in particular churches. In the case of Timothy, the church at Ephesus was being crippled by a particular group of women who were gossiping and buying into false teachings. And in the case of the Corinthian church, the author, the apostle Paul, was aiming to correct significant problems in which women – and men – would just abandon their spouses on a whim. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 11:11-12, just eight verses after the passage Ms. Waddington quoted, we read, “In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.” The point was not that women should be subservient, but that men and women need each other, and both were created by God.

In fact, in Genesis 2:21, we are told that, when God created woman, He did so with the rib of man. The symbolism of this move must not be ignored: God did not use a bone from Adam's foot, that he would be over Eve. Nor did he use a portion of his skull, that Eve would be over him. Rather, He used a rib, taken from the midsection of the body, to illustrate that the two genders were intended to be equal partners in life, regardless of the differences that would exist between them.

To further this argument, women played unprecedented roles, good and bad, in Old Testament history, from Sarai, Rebekah and Deborah to Queen Esther, Rahab and even Gomer. In the gospels, this role is expanded further as the young virgin Mary was the first to learn of the imminent coming of the Messiah, and Jesus surrounded himself with twelve disciples, yes, but also with a significant number of women who supported both He and His disciples in their ministry. In John 4, it was a woman who was the first to believe among the Samaritans and share the good news of Jesus with her people. And in Acts, it was women who played a critical role in the expanding ministry of the Church. Indeed, the apostle Paul, who wrote both of the New Testament passages quoted in Ms. Waddington's article, was quick to note the impact of women on his life and ministry. In the closing words of Romans, for example, of the 28 individuals to whom he sent greetings, no less than nine were women, including three of the first five. At least one woman, Prisca or Priscilla, was greeted before her husband – unheard of in the day – because of the leading role she assumed in their ministry.

Without meaning to deny the faults of Christians over recent centuries in this area, an objective consideration of history will show that it was actually evangelicals who were among the pioneers of the modern women's rights movement. In fact, it was a church from an antecedent of my own evangelical denomination – The Wesleyan Church – which hosted the first ever women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. And eight years later, it was a representative of that same antecedent organization who delivered the message for Antoinette Louisa Brown when, in 1856, she became the first woman to become an ordained minister in the United States. That representative, Rev. Luther Lee, spoke out of Galatians 3, where the same apostle Paul mentioned above declared poignantly, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

For the next 100 years, it was with that verse as their rallying cry, that Wesleyans and many other evangelicals like them led the fight for women's rights. In fact, it has only been in the last 50 years that evangelicals have really separated from the contemporary feminist movement as it has veered increasingly liberal in many of its positions, including on issues such as abortion and homosexual rights which Rev. Antoinette Brown and other pioneering leaders of the movement would have strongly opposed.

Without intending to endorse any specific political candidate, past, present or future, evangelical support for women leaders who will take Biblical stances on contemporary issues, then, should not be surprising in the least. We are, after all, commissioned to be and make disciples of Jesus, who in Luke 4:18-21 claimed as His mission on earth the words of Isaiah 61:1-2: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” In fact, it is from the Greek word for “good news” – euangellion – that the word evangelical comes from.

Wasn't it bad enough that America has suffered eight years under the wolves of the republican party and the two headed beast BUSH-CHENEY?
Pain isn't concerned about the poor and disenfranchised, she is only concerned about herself!

donavon

donavon