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Malcolm Gladwell and Wendy Kaminer

the breakfast table
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from: Wendy Kaminer

Re: God's plan

Posted Wednesday, June 10, 1998, at 3:16 PM ET

I'm trying to figure out a way to explain my disdain for the Baptist declarations about women and Jews without using tired, inflammatory phrases like "male supremacy" and "anti-Semitism"--but we don't have all day. You're right, of course, Baptists (and others) should be free to order their lives differently from you and me. As I've said, their marriages are none of my business. And they have a right to evangelize, which I'll defend--so long as they aim to persuade and not coerce, so long as they use private, not public funds.

I just don't have much faith in the willingness of the Southern Baptist Convention to practice what you preach--and let other people order their lives as they choose. I don't care what the Baptists, or anyone else, believe about homosexuality. I do care about organized opposition to gay rights legislation, which would enable a lot of Americans to order their lives according to their own beliefs and proclivities. I don't care about other people's marriages so long as they don't involve physical abuse (if it were up to me the Mormon practice of polygamy would be legal, though I can't imagine participating in a polygamous relationship--at least not knowingly.) I do care about the availability of day care and the ongoing campaign for economic equality. So, considering the political activism and increased political clout of the Southern Baptists, I pay attention to declarations that preach feminine submission.

I know, I know, it's not leadership as dominance (that's what the Promise Keepers say). It's loyalty and service. Maybe, in theory. In practice, I suspect it looks a lot like old-fashioned male chauvinism. (You're right; the Baptists have said nothing new.) Somehow I doubt that most men who've donned their God-given mantle of leadership are busy washing their wives' feet. Instead the women are left washing the socks. (Which, of course, is their right.)

The point is that the ideology about wifely submission reflects a notion of male superiority, just as the project to convert the Jews reflects a sense of spiritual superiority. You don't go around offering people eternal life unless you think that you (and only you) can deliver. A sense of superiority is not simply disrespectful; it quickly evolves into a self-righteous desire to govern (or to use another tired word) oppress the inferior class.

That being said, I've never felt oppressed, by Southern Baptists or anyone else. And I wasn't feeling particularly "upset" by their recent declarations or their futile efforts to convert the Jews. I'm too old to get upset by routine reminders or hints of (here come the loaded words) male supremacy and anti-Semitism. But I do notice them, or am I just imagining things?

Here's what really upset me in today's papers--a reference in the Wall Street Journal to airplane passengers who abuse flight attendants and other passengers, "or otherwise act out." Their behavior is attributed by airline executives to "air rage."

Well of course we're enraged. How do they expect people to behave when they're crammed into tiny seats in metal tubes and shot through the sky? The article was actually about people having sex on airplanes, but we are, after all, in each other's laps every time we fly. If the Baptists are looking for another moral crusade, maybe they can take on the airlines.

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718
from: Wendy Kaminer

Re: God's plan

Posted Wednesday, June 10, 1998, at 3:16 PM ET
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Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Wendy Kaminer is a fellow at Radcliffe College.
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