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Malcolm Gladwell and Wendy Kaminer

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Re: God's Plan

By Malcolm Gladwell
Posted Wednesday, June 10, 1998, at 1:31 PM ET

Somehow I knew that this would be topic number one for today...as someone who grew up in serious Bible Belt country, I have to say that I've always been a little amazed at the reaction that conservative evangelicals get. This was the off-lede of the Times. Why? Evangelicals have been going around saying that the husband is head of the household for, well, 2000 years. I don't think it means what you think it means, Wendy, which is that the wife worships God through the husband. The scriptures are pretty clear that all are equal before Christ. The scriptures are also pretty clear that the kind of leadership role that the evangelicals believe the husband is supposed to provide is not leadership as we normally construe it: it's more like loyalty and service. Jesus, as you will recall, washed the feet of Martha. That's what leadership means in this context.

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I'm not saying that I'm in favor of this idea of marriage. (memo to all single Manhattan women: I am emphatically NOT, repeat NOT, in favor of this idea of marriage). But these things are never as scary in reality as they seem in the abstract. I grew up around lots of conservative Mennonites, for example. They would agree wholehearted with the southern Baptists. In Mennonite communities, the men run the farms and business, the men are the preachers, they are the ones who formally run the community life. But you have to remember that in conservative Mennonite communities, business and politics--the man's world--are far less important than they are to us. The areas left to women--education, the raising and religious instruction of children, the social life of the community--are the things that the Mennonite think are the most important aspects of their faith. Who has more power in that world? I'm not sure I know. . .

The larger question here is why people get so upset at the notion that some people like to order their lives differently than we do. Why does it upset you, Wendy, that the Southern Baptists have set up a team to convert Jews to Christianity? MCI and AT&T are spending infinitely more money and effort trying to convert you to their long distance service. They are only offering you a few pennies in savings a month. The Baptists, at least, are offering you the promise of eternal life. . .

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