The Southern Baptist inerrancy controversy was really a proxy war over gender

Evidence

Accounts of the battles over the SBC commonly focus on the question of biblical inerrancy, but the battle over inerrancy was in part a proxy fight over gender. … Conservatives, however, insisted on a “populist hermeneutic,” a method privileging “the simplest, most direct interpretations of scripture.” For conservatives, this wasn’t just the right method, it was also the masculine one. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 249

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s contestation project: the claim that inerrancy debates were gender politics disguised connects to how militant masculinity became the organizing center rather than theological doctrine. — connects to: A leading Southern Baptist fundamentalist publicly supported Roe v. Wade in 1973 — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 91
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘populist hermeneutic’ as a masculinized reading method privileging the simplest literal interpretation.