Yes, yes, yes, I realize she is not running for president, but for John McCain’s Vice President. But with all the attention she’s getting it would be difficult for the uninformed voter to know for sure. But what has worried me the last couple weeks has not been the attacks from the far left media, but from the far right. The Extreme Conservatives, I group I’m usually quite fond of, and often agree with.
Recently I saw a man I respect very much on CNN discussing why it was wrong for Christian voters to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket. Not because of McCain’s questionable views on things, but because of Palin. Now let me say again I respect Dr. Voddie Baucham a great deal, and often times we see very eye to eye. I have reviewed his most recent book on this site, and had many good things to say . But on this particular issue of a female VP Dr. Baucham is wrong. I’ve read and heard him speak to a number of reasons he felt this was wrong, ranging from the fact she has young children at home, to her husband being unable to be head of the home. He occasionally sneaks a point of truth into this. But all in all seems to have little ground to stand on in taking a biblical argument to the fact women shouldn’t be serving in upper level politics.
All of that being said, I don’t want to paint myself a hypocrite, I have been at times uncomfortable with the Palin pick, and somewhere out there, there may be a cassette tape of me giving a speech why no women should ever be President. (Let me assure you if that tape is out there, I gave the speech to win a debate not because it fostered absolute truth.) But in the end of the day, I support the pick. And I believe its okay for Christians to support the pick as well. Over the next few paragraphs I will try to unpack my views on this, although it may call for follow up posts in the future.
The first area I’d like to look at is the 1 Timothy 2:11-12 argument. The passage says "11 Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. 12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence." This argument works wonders if Palin was applying for Pastor, Elder, or Deacon. And may pose a very controversial topic for another day. But this passage of scripture is talking entirely about women in the church. Yet government is separate from the church, in much the same way both are separate from the family. And there is not a passage of scripture in the New Testament that speaks to a women’s role in government.
Now Voddie Baucham takes this last throught to an extreme in his blog "What if Palin was..." . Now in this post, Dr Baucham poses this argument "Taking their line of reasoning, what would stop evangelicals from supporting, say, a polygamist candidate? Ridiculous? Lets see." Ridiculous is right, Sure Voddie can compare the Polygamist candidate to the female candidate because there are no restrictions from either in the New Testament, and examples of both in the Old Testament. Yet there is a glaring weakness in his playful argument. Now please stop me if I’m wrong, But the practice of polygamy is against the law. And doesn’t Romans 13:1-7 tell us as Christians we are to support the law? I guess if being a woman was illegal then we would have a whole different issue on our hands, but alas its not. (Which is good because if it was we would have a whole mess of problems).
I guess I have gotten slightly off task here, but my point here is not to push a candidate upon you, but to say scripturally, I can’t find a reason not to support a candidate who believes the same way we do, just because she is a woman. There have been times in history where God has called upon women to follow, and there have been times where they have been called to lead. We can look at the example of Deborah in Judges Chapter 4, who was a judge over Israel. She was a leader. We can also look to Esther who had to break taboos and step into politics in order to save her people. Esther, in my opinion, was a leader. So let us not stand and say God can’t do the same thing today, let us not say that God can’t use Governor Sara Palin to save this country in this day.
Now as I stated earlier, Dr Voddie Baucham and myself disagree on this particular issue. However he has been taking a beating in recent weeks from those who would call themselves evangelical Christians. My thoughts here are in no way to do that. As I said before, I have the utmost respect for the man and eagerly look forward to meeting the man again and sitting under his teaching. I will purchase his next book as it comes out, and I will continue to read his blog. As a matter of fact, in the above mentioned blog, Voddie says something I agree with very much. "The Culture War will not end on November 4th, no matter who wins. Or am I the only one who remembers that George W. Bush was supposed to be a political savior too?" And in this we see great truth, Even if a Christian leader is elected. The problems of abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues won’t go away over night. And we can’t count on men (or women) to solve them. Our country needs a change at the very core of our thinking. We need revival. We need God.
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