Fun with Limericks

I'm still crunching numbers on our BGCO pastor survey and making plans for Homecoming Weekend. But in the spirit of fun, I thought I'd pass along a website that offers you a chance to win a copy of Rachel Held Evans's new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  We've reported on the fundamentalist obsession with "biblical womanhood" before.

But in honor of Evans's new book (which LifeWay declined to carry online or in its stores because it undermines everything these people believe about gender roles in religious and family life and renders biblical literalism ridiculous they erroneously believe it won't sell many copies) and the fact that OBU now offers a course on women in ministry, I entered a contest on the website above to try to win a copy of the book.

To enter, all you have to do is submit a limerick.  Ostensibly, it should be about Evans's book, but I came up with something slightly different. Here's my entry:

She went off to a Baptist college
To gain complimentarian knowledge
She was called to be a pastor
And went to seminary faster
Than those fundies would like to acknowledge.

Then I thought maybe some of you in the Save OBU universe might have a clever limerick you'd like to submit in the comments below.  Think of the changes at OBU over the past few years and see if you can come up with a limerick!  I'll publish some of the best ones later in the week.

Here's one I made up just to jump start your creativity:

OBU once taught students to think
If you're gay you must go to a shrink
Now the fundies' safe "knowledge"
Harms our rep as a college
Forbes warns we're beginning to stink.

Or how about this?

OBU is a place that endears
Filling lives with laughter and tears
God's sustained Bison Hill
And I pray that he will
For another six thousand years.

You get the idea...

In Case You Need More Instruction on "Biblical Womanhood"

Sorry, folks, no Faculty Friday post today.

To date, Women at OBU has been our most-viewed blog post.  Also, 60% of our Facebook friends are women.  I'm sure you know better than I do what your true God-given role as women really is all about.  But if the 2000 revision of the Baptist Faith and Message was not clear enough for you cute little cupcakes, fear not!  A fundamentalist SBC seminary president's wife has written a book on the subject, available from LifeWay (SBC's publishing arm) for $39.99.

She is a specialist in biblical studies and theology special education and child development.  Clearly, the bar for getting theology books published by LifeWay is shockingly low.  But this gal knows pretty much everything there is to know about being a good, submissive Baptist wife.  (Her bio actually lists "President's Wife" before "Professor of Women's Ministry.")  She has preached spoken in Raley Chapel before ("I met my husband the first week of college...") and no doubt will again as the book tour heats up.

Since other translations and commentaries are driven by "21st century social agendas," Mrs. Dr. Kelley is ready to help free you from your feminist mothers... or something.  And her coauthor is ready to convince you that the theme of the Book of Esther is... you guessed it, submission.  You already know where a woman's place is not (pulpits, teaching Bible or theology at OBU, etc.), but this book presumably has a positive spin on where your place is:

So ladies, make your husband a sandwich and start reading.  The book will undoubtedly be available in OBU's new fundamentalist bookstore soon.