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It’s not often that Sunday School teachers make national news, so when they do, you can bet that it’s probably not good news.  Last August, a Sunday School teacher named Mary Lambert from First Baptist Church of Watertown, New York made news when her church dismissed her from her teaching position of 11 years.  So what was the reason for dismissing a woman who had been a member of the church for 60 years from teaching Sunday School?  Simple - she was a woman.  The letter of dismissal that she received from the diaconate board notified her that the board had adopted Scriptural qualifications for Sunday School teachers, and quoted Paul’s first letter to Timothy in chapter 2, where he writes “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  ¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.  ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve.  ¹⁴ And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.  First Baptist Church, desiring to take the Bible literally, removed every woman from positions of teaching.

Obviously, people around the country were outraged at the discrimination shown by this church.  I read a lot of reviews of this, and almost all of them were appalled at the inhumanity and backwardness of this church leadership.  But there was one exception I found - atheism.com hailed the pastor for sticking to the Bible, in the process again demonstrating how irrelevant and backwards Christianity really is.  Here’s the problem, of course – 1 Timothy 2 is part of the Bible, and if you want to take the Bible seriously as authoritative for faith and practice, then how do you not come to the same conclusion – women need to be silent and not teach or have authority.

This morning we’re beginning a new series on what the Bible actually says about men and women.  During this series, we are going to be looking at some of the most difficult passages to understand in all of the Bible over the next month or two.  It’s going to require more of an understanding of cultural context and of Greek and Hebrew then you may normally need on a Sunday, and more importantly, the ability to check your own prejudices at the door and come to the Bible with as open a mind as possible.