Dear visionaries,
In making the Nazi connection, Anne failed to mention that when I was in the Navy (and Germany also had a Navy, did it not?) I owned a Volkswagen.
I think that Will missed one of my key points. I said that I actually think this is appropriate. I believe that some of the outside interest in what our private Christian school is doing is not a bad thing at all. I don’t think anything is wrong with that interest, and I think the school community should welcome it. I was just urging those people who have spent their entire lives out in the progressive sticks to not make a scene when they encounter something new in a downtown Paris restaurant. “Whut’s thet!? Ain no cheese atall! Kin I get some Velveeter?”
Susannah says that a number of people would be interested “to hear about” any Christian-ritual-law exclusion of women from school boards. I dare say they would, but many of them would be interested only for purposes of mocking — or for making the never-far-away handy-dandy Nazi comparison. But for those who really are interested, conservative Christians believe that the apostle Paul prohibits women from serving as elders or pastors of churches (1 Tim. 2:12-15). This is the nearest scriptural prohibition to our point of discussion, and it does not apply. The text is not addressing school boards but rather sessions of elders. The serious concern at Logos is whether our informal emphasis (encouraging men to be involved in the education of their children) has resulted in a de facto situation that leaves the school in a vulnerable position. Courts have regularly found de facto circumstances as evidence of illegal discrimination, and they have also had a regrettable tendency to not understand the distinction between private and public. So, this might be thought of as one proposed precaution — which hasn’t even passed yet. “Yes, but you were thinking about it, you Nazi!”
So, that said, here would be the basic argument for all male school boards, the premises of which were first laid down by Mark Twain. In short, we have too high a view of women. Twain: “First, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made school boards.” We want to limit access to the board to those who pre-qualify.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.