Florida Governor Jeb Bush recently nominated a fundamentalist Christian man named Jerry Regier to head the state’s embattled Department of Children and Family Services. (Several children had been either lost or killed when supposedly under the agency’s care.) Regier has articulated views that support keeping wives in a submissive state with regard to their husbands and spanking children for discipline sake even to the point of causing welts and bruising.
This point of this article is not to take a position on the value of submitted wives/dominant husbands or corporal punishment. It is our desire, however, to take issue with the motivation for such a view, that spanking and wifely submission is the “godly” way for all people.
We’ve have been making the point since the Taliban came into our lexicon that their religious approach (forcing and/or coercing people into “godly” behavior) is no different philosophically than that of evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity. But now the link between Talibanism legalism and Christian legalism has been made in our common culture.
During a meeting in the Sunshine State about the a fore mentioned Regier’s nomination, protesters showed up clad in burkas, the light blue head to toe covering that Taliban women are forced to wear. The protesters’ demonstration attempted to make the case that Regier’s “one size fits all” religious views are no different than the approach the extreme Islamists take. The picture of these totally covered women attending an American political event was worth a million words.
The good news is that more and more people of all backgrounds are coming to the realization of the devastating affects of religion on the minds and lives of those it is perpetrated against. The Light of the Gospel, that ALL are righteous already before God because of the work of Christ, is having its intended affect. And not a moment too soon.
Communicating Love (God’s Unconditional Love for ALL),
Glenn