Christian homemaking will save the Southern Baptist Convention and the nation, said the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, one of the nation’s largest training schools for pastors.Paige Patterson announced at the recent SBC meeting in San Antonio that his school was offering an academic program to train women how to make a Christian home.
Yes, there is evidently a Christian way for wives to water houseplants, wash clothes, warm leftovers and wax floors.
Having made June Cleaver the biblical model for motherhood, training the wives of ministers to be June Cleaver with a Christian twist shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The SBC adopted a doctrinal statement in 1998 that a wife had “the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household.”
The so-called cultural crisis apparently necessitated the seminary’s program, which will require 23 hours of course work, including seven hours of “design and apparel” with a lab for clothing construction. Another seven hours of course study covers meal preparation and nutrition.