Male theologian tells female pastor to 'be silent' after she calls for an end to Christian misogyny

After a female pastor condemned misogyny in Christianity, a male theologian told her to "be silent" and criticized her writing.

As Sarahbeth Caplin wrote in Patheos' The Friendly Atheist blog, Christian author, pastor and theologian Beth Moore wrote an open letter to her male counterparts about her experiences with sexism in the church. In the letter, Moore "implores them to hold each other accountable for the way they treat their female contemporaries."

"As a woman leader in the conservative Evangelical world," Moore wrote, "I learned early to show constant pronounced deference — not just proper respect which I was glad to show — to male leaders and, when placed in situations to serve alongside them, to do so apologetically."

She went on to detail the type of "deference" she showed — wearing flats around shorter men so as not to appear taller than them, being ignored by male speakers at conferences and being "made fun of" to her face at meetings, supposedly in jest.

In response to her letter, a theologian named Seth Dunn who boasts a degree in "Christian Apologetics" criticized Moore's character and writing — and implored her to keep quiet.

"Be silent. You are not a good Bible teacher," Dunn wrote in a post on his blog. "You preach and write about yourself all the time as is if you were a character in the Biblical story. You’re not."

"It pains me to know that so many women erroneously think that you are a good source for biblical teaching," he continued. "You are not. Let me be clear, you aren’t a terrible Bible teacher because you are a woman, you are a terrible Bible teacher because you are not good at teaching the Bible. That you are a woman is irrelevant."

Dunn went on to suggest that male theologians at conferences may have ignored Moore because they found her too alluring.

"Also, to be forthright, you are a good-looking woman," he wrote. "Did it ever cross your mind that the Christian ministers who didn’t talk to you at conferences didn’t want to jeopardize their career by being thought to flirt with you?"