In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, former President Jimmy Carter discussed the abuse of woman around the world, in which he tied to those abuses being justified by religious texts:
JOE SCARBOROUGH, host “Morning Joe”: You tie in religion and how people for centuries, you selected texts just like people in the South did, 50, 60 years ago to justify racial discrimination. now you talk about religious being used to justify rape, slavery, honor killings, and one abuse after another against women.
CARTER: Well, the fact is I happen to be a Christian and Jesus Christ was a very wonderful leader who never discriminated in any word or action against women.
SCARBOROUGH: …and women actually played a very important role in his ministry.
CARTER: Extremely so, but with the writing of St. Paul, you can selectively take versus out of the Bible and justify women not being able to be priest and so forth, so the Catholic Church and Southern Baptist Convention and others quite often say women are not qualified to have an equal role in the service of men. men take this as kind of a proof they can abuse their wives or pay less pay, you know?
SCARBOROUGH: Isn’t it amazing to you as a Sunday school teacher for 70 years, I’m always fascinated and a bit disturbed by people that will focus on something that Paul wrote instead of looking at those red letters in the gospels and look at the life of Jesus and look at the fact that women played such an important role in his ministry and twist those words.
CARTER: Well, you know, the first three centuries of the early Christian church, women did play an equal role as Paul proved in the chapter, I believe, but the men soon decided why don’t we take over the church? and why don’t we control? so they began to apply certain versus in Paul’s writings and say women can’t be leaders in the church. of course, in some of the denominations of our church and some of the Christian elements, women are not permitted to play equal roles. of course, in the Islamic faith as well. but, you know, I’ve studied very careful the Koran, particularly since our hostages were held and Brzezinski was the National Security Adviser and very few versus in the Koran that doesn’t say men and women are equal, but in local interpretations, particularly in the remote areas of Africa and so forth women are horribly abused…
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