Intro to Woman's Place 101

If you're thinking that the Catholic Church is dragging its feet on recognizing women as equals, here's something to put things in a better perspective. The following is not a parody: it's real!

Equal but different.

You hear that a lot on the lush green campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

God values men and women equally, any student here will tell you. It's just that he's given them different responsibilities: Men make decisions; women make dinner.

This fall, the internationally known seminary - a century-old training ground for Southern Baptists - began reinforcing those traditional gender roles with college classes in homemaking. The academic program, open only to women, includes lectures on laundering stubborn stains and a lab in baking chocolate-chip cookies.

Philosophical courses such as "Biblical Model for the Home and Family" teach that God expects wives to submit graciously to their husbands' leadership. A model house, to be completed by next fall, will allow women to get credit toward bachelor's degrees by learning how to set tables, sew buttons, and sustain lively dinner-time conversation.

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So far, just eight of the 300 students in the seminary's undergraduate program are enrolled in the homemaking concentration, which is similar to a major and counts toward a bachelor of arts in humanities. Many more women, including graduate students and wives of seminarians, study traditional gender roles in courses such as "Wife of the Equipping Minister." On a recent evening, more than 50 women - some in sloppy sweats, others in prim sweater sets - pulled out notebooks as class opened with student presentations. One woman talked about her hobby of cross-stitching. Another showed how she uses the Internet to track grocery coupons.

Laney Homan, 30, drew excited murmurs with her talk on meal planning, featuring a recipe for a sure-fire "freezer pleaser" - a triple batch of meatloaf (secret ingredient: oatmeal). Thanks to a computerized system for generating grocery lists, Homan said, "I've actually trained my husband to shop for me." Laughing, she threw her palms toward the heavens and added: "Praise Jesus!"

For the rest of the nearly three-hour class, guest lecturer Ashley Smith, the wife of a theology professor, laid out the biblical basis for what she calls "the glorious inequalities of life."

Smith, 30, confided that she sometimes resents her husband for advancing his career "while I'm changing diapers and getting poop all over me." But then she quoted from Ephesians: "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." And from Genesis: God created Eve to be a "suitable helper" for Adam.

"If we love the Scripture, we must do it," said Smith, who gave up her dreams of a career when her husband said it was time to have children. "We must fit into this role. It's so much more important than our own personal happiness."

More moderate Southern Baptists disagree, and they counter with their own biblical references. When Jesus dined at the home of two sisters, he praised Mary, who spent the evening studying his teachings, above Martha, who did chores. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes that "there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ."

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