With all this church gender role debate, I can barely concentrate on watching porn

Folks, it looks like the Baptists are at it again. Last week, or possibly last month [have my team look this up and fix it before they post this], the SBC, which stands for Southern Baptist C, disinherited Elizabeth Warren’s church because she said it was for Indians, and this is not acceptable: we use the term Native Americans now, unless Elizabeth Warren meant the other, foreign kind of Indians, in which case we use the term American Indians.

But let’s not carry the lede: the other reason Warren’s church got in trouble was because she let women be pastors. I don’t know if the women were Native American or American Indian. [Have my team look this up, too]

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I’m not against having women in church, per say. I mean, women buy books, too. Actually, they buy almost all of the books. So, yes. We need women in the church. And make no mistake: I fully support women being pastors, if this is what will make women respect my brand and buy my books. I would do almost anything to make women think I am their ally, short of befriending them.

However, the problem with letting women be pastors is that it means more sermons. First, the girl pastor has to preach, and then the boy pastor has to preach; folks, you are literally doubling your sermons by 50%. This means that you are late getting out to the restaurants. What are you supposed to do, then? Go to the early service with all the old people, like you’re some sort of Presbyterian? You see why this is so problematic.

But let’s dispense with the peasantry: the true victim in all of this is me. In order to maintain my brand’s position on the cutting ledge of Christian culture, I am forced to pay attention to the constant squabbling of conservative and progressive believers. I must go to Christianity Today before I hit the porn sites! And it has taken a toll: some days, I am forced to interact with my team two and even three times. And I am disoriented! Are women good or bad today? Which verses are we paying attention to? What is Junia’s pronoun today? I live in a constant fear that someone will trap me with my own words and force me to admit that I believe something.

Therefore, I offer a modest proposal: all of the churches that only want boy pastors could form their own denomination, called—and I’m just shitballing here—Southern Baptists. Likewise, all of the churches that want girl pastors too could form a different denomination, called, say, Methodists. Or even—hear me out—Baptists. And then all of the people who are left, who don’t know what they want, can get book deals to write about the spiritual trauma of potlucks or the liturgy of flannelgraph or whatever. So that would pretty much fix everything, I suppose.

And, to Andrew: good luck in your future endeavors. Bryson and I hope that you will begin by finding classier reading material.

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