ATLANTA (ABP) — Former President Jimmy Carter recently told the world's largest interfaith gathering that religion has a vital role to play in ending "the global scourge of discrimination and violence against women."
Speaking by remote video from Atlanta to the fifth modern-day Parliament of the World's Religions meeting in Melbourne, Australia, the 39th president of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize winner addressed the gathering Dec. 3 as "a Christian layman and a former political leader."
"Every generic religious text encourages believers to respect essential human dignity, yet some selected scriptures are interpreted to justify the derogation or inferiority of women and girls, our fellow human beings," said Carter, a former Southern Baptist who teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga.
Carter told representatives from 80 nationalities and more than 220 faith traditions that "all of us have a responsibility to acknowledge and address the gross acts of discrimination and violence against women that occur every day."
He cited examples including statistics showing that one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime, the use of rape as a weapon of war in places like the Republic of the Congo and estimates that 4 million girls and women are trafficked each year in the sex trade.
Carter said religious bodies lag behind the secular world in seeking progress for women.
"It is ironic that women are now welcomed into all major professions and other positions of authority, but are branded as inferior and deprived of the equal right to serve God in positions of religious leadership," he said. "The plight of abused women is made more acceptable by the mandated subservience of women by religious leaders."
Carter repeated many themes he included in an article he wrote in July representing the Elders, an independent group of eminent global leaders convened by Nelson Mandela to combine their collective influence and experience to support peace and human rights.
In the article Carter said his decision nine years earlier to leave the Southern Baptist Convention became "inevitable" when SBC leaders adopted a new consensus faith statement "quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be 'subservient' to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service."
Carter referred to the denomination's most recent version of the Baptist Faith and Message statement. While it does declare that women should not be pastors and should submit to their husbands' "servant leadership," it is silent on whether women can serve as deacons or chaplains and does not claim that Eve was created after Adam or is responsible for original sin. However, other SBC actions over the last three decades — including a 25-year-old resolution and a more recent decision by its home-mision agency to quit endorsing female chaplains — have dealt with the other issues Carter addressed.
Some SBC leaders objected to Carter's theology, but he told religious leaders in Melbourne that now that he is no longer in public office he is able "to speak without restraint on somewhat controversial subjects."
Carter acknowledged there are verses in the Bible that would appear to support the subjugation of women, but he said they reflect the cultural mores of the times when they were written instead of God's will.
"The truth is that male religious leaders have had — and still have — an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women," Carter said. "They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter."
"At their most repugnant, the belief that women are inferior human beings in the eyes of God gives excuses to the brutal husband who beats his wife, the soldier who rapes a woman, the employer who has a lower pay scale for women employees, or parents who decide to abort a female embryo," he said. "It also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair and equal access to education, health care, employment, and influence within their own communities."
Carter called "on all those with influence to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices — in religious and secular life — that justify discrimination against women and to acknowledge and emphasize the positive messages of equality and human dignity."
The Parliament of the World's Religions has its roots in an 1893 meeting during the Chicago World's Fair. For the modern-day iteration of the gathering, its mission is to "cultivate harmony among the world's religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
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