Good thing this didn't happen at any school Barack Obama attended:

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A woman who had held a tenure-track position was denied tenure at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004, according to a Jan. 19 Dallas Morning News story.

The professor, Sheri Klouda, was given a tenure-track position to teach Hebrew in Southwestern's school of theology when she received her Ph.D. at the Fort Worth, Texas, campus in 2002, according to the newspaper report....

Van McClain, chairman of Southwestern's board of trustees, told the Dallas Morning News that the seminary has returned to its "traditional, confessional and biblical position" that a woman should not instruct men in theology courses or in biblical languages.

...McClain also told the newspaper, "I do not know of any women teaching in any of the SBC seminaries presently in the area of theology or biblical languages. In my estimation all of the seminaries have sought to be more consistent with most Southern Baptists' understanding of Scripture on the matter."

...The newspaper noted that [President Paige] Patterson's wife Dorothy continues to teach in Southwestern’s school of theology, with McClain explaining that she teaches courses in women's studies that are attended only by women....

An AP story offers a clarification for us heathens:

Southwestern is taking the "traditional, confessional and biblical position" that women should not teach men in theology or biblical languages, McClain said. That position is based on a Biblical verse in which the Apostle Paul says, "I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man."

That's 1 Timothy 2:12. In the New International Version it's "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

Now, given the number of times we've been told recently that Islam is utterly irreconcilable with Western values because of this or that intemperate passage in the Koran -- which we're supposed to assume every Muslim on the planet takes literally -- what are we to conclude from this story? Aren't we forced to conclude that Christianity is hopelessly incompatible with the Western belief in gender equality?