I typically avoid talking politics.

I might raise certain issues, like the death penalty, but I have no interest in endorsing either major party or any specific candidate. I think the proper term is aggressively nonpartisan, which essentially means neither party’s platform looks anything like the message of Jesus to me.

So, keep that in mind, because I’m going to discuss Michele Bachmann, but it’s not about the politics.

A few weeks ago, Liberty University featured Bachmann as their convocation speaker.

That’s not the issue though, they can have whatever speaker they would like, and I’m sure Bachmann is the sort of speaker you would like if you like that sort of thing.

The issue is the hermenutical gymnastics Liberty has to engage in to feature a female candidate for this nation’s highest office, while at the same time being opposed to women holding the highest office in a local church.

It’s a perfect example of picking and choosing when our principles apply.

Now, as I’ve discussed before, we all end up picking and choosing when we read the Bible. Look down at your clothes, any of them made of more than one material? Then you pick and choose too.

And that’s fine, inevitable even. The important thing is that we realize why we pick and choose the way we do, that we are intentional about our method of interpretation, and that we attempt to be consistent and reasonable about it.

When your school offers a Women’s Ministries degree that trains women for career paths like “Women’s Ministry Director in the Local Church, Teen Girl Camp Counselor, Women’s Conference Coordinator, Teen Girl/ Women’s Conference Speaker” – in other words anything but teaching men – does it seem consistent to invite a female presidential candidate to speak at your school?

If women shouldn’t be pastors because they are too naïve (Eve was the one deceived by the serpent after all!), or because male headship is the natural order, or because they are somehow weaker or less capable, or simply because God ordained that they shouldn’t have authority over men, then why would it make any sense to have a female president?

And if you’re fine with a woman as president, or professor, or CEO, then what sort of hermeneutical gymnastics are necessary to say yes to all that and yet no to women as pastors?

If you want Bachmann for president that’s fine [well, not to me, but that has nothing to do with her gender], and if you don’t want to let women be pastors no one can make you, but I don’t see how you can have both and pretend it is consistent.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore