In Exodus’ weekly media synopsis, Exodus and Focus on the Family promote this account of God’s plan for men and women.
Dorothy Kelley Patterson is a professor in the “women’s studies” program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, where her husband, Paige, is president.
She appeared on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program May 12:
“God started with the home,” Patterson said in a recording of an address she delivered at the annual convention of Concerned Women for America. “He chose that vehicle to reveal Himself to us.” For example, God is found in Scripture as “our Father” and “we are His children” and the church is found as “His bride,” she said.
Patterson is portrayed as someone who dumbs down Christianity into child storybook phrases of two to five words. Her definition of the “home” seems derived more from Leave It to Beaver than from the Bible — or from the real world, in which much of the population lives in shantytowns, urban slums, and rural shacks, and in which women and children must produce much of the meager household revenue.
Never mind facts or fairness, Patterson says — people who care about those are just “moping and pouting” and changing her God’s plan. The one role of all men is to lead and make money, Patterson says; as for the role of women,
That role has “nothing to do with gifts or intelligence.” She is to be a “helper” to her husband, she said, even though she is created equal to him.
But Patterson never says where, exactly, the Bible ever says that women are equal — or how they can be “equal” but still dumb, giftless, and subservient.
Woe to anyone who dares to disagree with Patterson’s sexism: they “follow the familiar path of deception displayed by the serpent in Genesis, Patterson said. They assume that their plan is better and they contradict God.”
Perhaps the remark that’s most revealing:
Dobson said he chose Patterson’s address for the broadcast because she articulated well the same principles he has been advocating his entire career.
This, my friends, is the joyful new lifestyle that Exodus and Focus on the Family have in store for the world’s exgay women.