Dorothy Patterson's submissive hats and midnight dinners

Unsubmissive Dorothy Patterson? The wife of Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, dining with radical terrorist political leaders, Wade? Are you sure?

Oh my! Here it is:

... she's been the guest of Yaser Arafat at a midnight banquet in Saddam Hussein's palace guest house in Baghdad.

Now, someone's going to explain in painstaking detail how that life history fits neatly with the rather patriarchal Danvers Statement to which Southwestern Theological Seminary recently subscribed. Because there has to be a pile of Southern Baptist Convention patriarchy hidden in this Dorothy story somewhere. Otherwise, there's a glaring conflict of walk with talk here.

Hand me that shovel, will you?

Are Driscoll and Fatica renewals or further decline?

Joseph Laycock of Boston University brings a broader, more balanced perspective to the issues of the Mark Driscoll controversy which recently rolled through the Southern Baptist blog world. Driscoll and Justin Fatica, founder of the Catholic ministry group Hard as Nails, are in a sense both cultural heirs to the Victorian English tradition of "Muscular Christianity."

He writes in the current Martin Marty Center Sightings:

"Muscular Christianity," which emphasized an ideal of vigorous masculinity, first appeared in Victorian England. The term was coined to describe the writings of Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, who felt that sports and athleticism would produce Christians who were more fit for civic duty. Hughes and Kingsley also shared a concern over the changes of industrialism and worried whether traditional morality would be able to adapt.

There is something more, however, and it is disturbing:

While Fatica encourages women to join the Hard as Nails ministry, Driscoll reminds his congregation that women must submit to their husbands and are forbidden from taking preaching roles. On his blog, Driscoll implied that Ted Haggard's wife contributed to his downfall: "A wife who lets herself go is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either." These comments beg the question:
Is this hyper-muscular Christianity really a radical, transgressive approach to ministry? Or is it actually the death-throes of an outmoded patriarchy?

We hope the former emerges from their still-unfinished work, and recommend the entire, blissfully brief and coherent piece to you here.

[Thanks to @rebeccawoods for bringing this to our attention.]