REVISED Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007
FORT WORTH, Texas (BP)–A new undergraduate homemaking program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary “is raising eyebrows among some Southern Baptists,” according to an Associated Press article circulated nationally Aug. 10.
The classes are part of a homemaking concentration for a bachelor of arts in humanities degree through The College at Southwestern, the Texas seminary’s undergraduate school. Three-credit-hour courses in the concentration are General Homemaking, Biblical Model for the Home and Family and The Value of a Child. Also required are seven credit hours in meal preparation and nutrition and seven hours in the design and sewing of clothing.
Students also must take 23 hours in biblical studies, two years of Greek and Latin and do extensive reading in history’s great philosophers, said Terri Stovall, Southwestern’s dean of women’s studies.
The homemaking classes are part of “one of the most challenging, most well-rounded and complete educations a woman can receive,” she told Baptist Press Aug. 13.
Stovall holds two SWBTS degrees, a doctorate in church administration and a master of arts in religious education.
The Associated Press story cited only one critic of the homemaking program, Ben Cole, who is in the process of leaving the pastorate of Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, to join the staff of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., in a media and small groups role.
The homemaking program “is quite superfluous to the mission of theological education in Southern Baptist life,” Cole wrote on a blog, according to the AP. “It’s yet another example of the ridiculous and silly degree to which some Southern Baptists, Southwestern in particular, are trying to return to what they perceive to be biblical gender roles.”
Another critic was cited in a Southwestern news release in early July. Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, which is partly funded by the SBC-breakaway Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, wrote in a June 18 column, “What is dangerous about Christian homemaking programs is that they diminish the Christian faith and deceive naïve Christians.”
Stovall, in the SWBTS news release, noted that the homemaking concentration is biblically grounded in the Apostle Paul’s command to Titus to train women how to be good homemakers and it is needed “because of the low standard of family and home life in contemporary culture.”
Homemaking skills are especially important for women who marry men in the ministry, Stovall also said. “A woman can honestly make or break a ministry,” she was quoted as saying. “What she does in a home as a partner in ministry with her husband can take a ministry miles ahead if she can just do what God has called her to do in the way that He has called her to do it.”
Stovall told Baptist Press that because the homemaking concentration is part of an undergraduate degree, most of its enrollees will be 18- to 20-year-old single women. The program also may be of interest to homeschool students in a “dual enrollment” fashion, providing credit for both a high school diploma and a college-level degree, Stovall said.
While Southwestern, in Fort Worth, is the only Southern Baptist seminary to offer homemaking studies, three others offer various women’s ministry programs. Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary offer master of divinity and master of arts programs in women’s ministry. In addition to Southwestern, Southeastern and New Orleans seminaries, certificate programs designed to equip wives of ministers through courses that include theology, practical ministry, homemaking and parenting studies are available at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Ca., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
At all the SBC seminaries, women can enroll in a range of other master’s- and doctoral-level degree programs, such as theology, missions, music and religious education.
Southwestern’s homemaking degree was adopted by the seminary’s trustees last fall, but not publicized until Paige Patterson, the seminary’s president, spoke about it during his report at the SBC annual meeting in San Antonio.
Also, at the seminary’s alumni luncheon June 13, Patterson said that a donation for the homemaking program helped build a house-like classroom for classes and labs in food preparation, hospitality and other Christian homemaking disciplines.
–30–
Art Toalston is editor of Baptist Press. Michael Foust contributed to this article.
