Manbags and Hashtags

I was shocked. I went down today to a special "Baptists on the Move" meeting in Essex. I had been excited to receive the invitation, and had been looking forward to meeting fellow-minded, evangelical and Biblically orthodox Baptist ministers from a range of churches that were as godly as can be expected from people who don't attend Salem Chapel, Frisby-on-Soar.

Now I hadn't realised that some members of the Baptist Union were going. Or I'd have thought otherwise. Indeed, some of the ministers were actually women.  I can only hope and pray that they are the pastors of special women-only churches, where their ministry would be acceptable, but I somehow doubt it.  And to make it worse, I met a Baptist Union minister who told me that in his church "manbags" are all the rage. According to said - I can only say - person, you can convince people that you're actually carrying a Bible in there, when in reality it's a bag of Werther's Originals, some spare cash , a Vic inhaler and your house keys. I noted that he was also wearing - and I can only shudder again - sandals.

Manbags. Just think of that word again. Manbags.

I look into the Holy Scriptures to find out what God has to say about Manbags, and I find it in Dt 22, as I expected:

22:5 The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. 


Strong words? I think so. But abundantly clear. All cross-dressing is forbidden - indeed, an abomination - encouraging towards licentious behaviour and acts of a potentially unisexual nature. So we shrink from men in blouses, dresses or skirts - or those skirt-like things that trendy German theology lecturers bring back from the South Seas. We don't have much of this sort of thing in Frisby-on-Soar but I can imagine it in Market Bosworth, or Melton Mowbray.  Indeed, sometimes I wake in a sweat in the night, imagining transvestitism in Melton Mowbray. Women in "slacks", or shirts that button as a man's shirt does. Any man wearing a shirt in subtle pink or topaz shades, or particularly a tie in such colours. For myself, I'd include any man wearing a kilt. Not to mention men wearing anything as effeminate as face-cream, bubble bath or going about with pierced ears.


And as for a manbag- which is just a lady's handbag with word "hand" replaced with "man" - clearly this comes under the prohibition. It's a handbag.  Just admit it.  And putting the holy Scripture into such an abomination - well, words fail me. Had I known that members of the Baptist Union had been attending the conference - I would never have attended. In future I shall read the invitations more carefully.