Has the world started spinning backwards?

I had to rub my eyes and read this again a second time to make sure it wasn't a spoof. Nope, it's real. The fundamentalists are trying to reverse time, back to an era when women stayed home to be good little housekeepers, and the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wants to help by offering courses for women only in homemaking.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers coursework in Greek and Hebrew, in archaeology, in the philosophy of religion and — starting this fall — in how to cook and sew.

One of the nation's largest Southern Baptist seminaries, the school is introducing a new, women-only academic program in homemaking — a 23-hour concentration that counts toward a bachelor of arts degree in humanities. The program is aimed at helping establish what Southwestern's president calls biblical family and gender roles.

Coursework will include seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation, seven hours of textile design and "clothing construction," three hours of general homemaking, three hours on "the value of a child," and three hours on the "biblical model for the home and family."

Seminary officials say the main focus of the courses is on hospitality in the home — teaching women interior design as well as how to sew and cook. Women also study children's spiritual, physical and emotional development.

Flashback from the past:


Fortunately, not all religious women want to be submissive to their husbands and stay home and breed and wash diapers and mend socks while their husband dominate and bring home the bacon.

Yet the program is raising eyebrows among some Southern Baptists, who say a degree concentration in how to be a Christian housewife is not useful, and a waste of seminary resources.

However, there are those brainwashed women who like being submissive and dominated by their men because they they've been taught that is what their god wants.

Seminary President Paige Patterson, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has its executive committee headquarters in Nashville, said wives of seminary students asked for the homemaking courses. The program was approved by seminary trustees.

"We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God's word for the home and the family," Patterson said at the denomination's annual meeting in June. "If we do not do something to salvage the future of the home, both our denomination and our nation will be destroyed."

*snip*

Stovall said the homemaking degree is one of 10 women's programs at the seminary and is "only targeted to women whose heart and calling is the home."

So, are they saying that women who choose to work outside the home, or who must work outside their homes love and care about their families less than those who have the luxury to stay at home to organize their canned goods, bake cherry pies and mend their husband's underwear?

To say that a return to Home Economics and learning to cook and sew and being obedient and submissive housewives is going to save the country is, well -- not too smart and limiting for future options.

On a personal level for these women, what good is a degree in "Homemaking" going to be if a woman finds herself suddenly left on her own to support herself and any children she might have?