What the Bible Tells Us About Sarah Palin

Since the Republican Party suffered widespread defeat on Election Day, the GOP faithful have been debating whether the party should move to the proverbial political center or embrace the conservatism of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. What has gone unnoticed is that support for Palin is a repudiation of the Bible.

Palin, while lauded as a draw for conservative evangelical voters, actually fits uneasily into the theological worldview of the Christian Right. To be sure, Palin's politics are a close, if not exact match for social conservatives. She is strongly against a woman's right to choose abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. She is against same-sex marriage and for an expansive reading of the Second Amendment. She is a perfect candidate -- so long as evangelicals are able to look past her gender.

But supporting Palin's vice-presidential bid -- and her possible ambitions for 2012 -- requires evangelical voters to overlook the "complementarian" conception of the roles of men and women that holds sway among Southern Baptists and other evangelicals. Based on their reading of Scripture, they believe that men and women have distinctly different roles assigned to them by God. Women, in this perspective, are divinely mandated to serve as wives, mothers and keepers of the home. They are not allowed to serve as pastors, and they are obliged to submit to their husband in their own homes and in public.

The power of the belief that women are not eligible to lead came crashing into religious living rooms in September when more than 100 Christian bookstores, run by the Southern Baptist Convention, refused to publicly display an edition of Gospel Today magazine that featured five female pastors on the cover. The magazine had to be withdrawn from public display, said a spokesman, because the story "clearly advocates a position contrary to our denomination's statement of faith." Christians could only get the magazine by asking for it from behind the counter, a la Penthouse or Playboy.

How could it be that a female in the White House was acceptable at the same time that females at the pulpit posed a problem?

Albert Mohler, president of the Baptist Convention, offered an answer on his blog: Scripture is vague on the question of whether women can have public responsibilities and besides, Palin has fulfilled her wifely and motherly duties, he argued.

The New Testament clearly speaks to the complementary roles of men and women in the home and in the church," he wrote, "but not in roles of public responsibility. I believe that women as CEOs in the business world and as officials in government are no affront to Scripture. Then again, that presupposes that women -- and men -- have first fulfilled their responsibilities within the little commonwealth of the family.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood argued that:

The Bible calls women to specific roles in the church and home, but does not prohibit them from exercising leadership in secular political fields. Rather, the Queen of Sheba is presented in 1 Kings 10:1-13 in a positive light in her interaction with King Solomon. Queen Esther offers an even better example of a woman who appropriately exerted influence for the good of her people without holding the highest position of national authority (Esther 2:17).  In this light, we cannot categorically say that it was sinful for Queen Victoria to lead England as a single woman strictly because of her gender, nor can we condemn Governor Palin or any other woman for seeking the office of Vice President.

But, as any reader of the Bible knows, these are selective readings. Mohler and the council ignore politically inconvenient passages from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy that make clear that men, not women, should rule.