1998 statement signed by Huck affirmed: “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband”

posted at 6:30 pm on December 11, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Via Dan Riehl, just the sort of thing you want to have to defend during a campaign, especially when you’re running against a woman with women voters already gravitating to her.

­­More than 50 evangelical leaders have signed a paper affirming a statement on the family adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention in June…

The husband should “love his wife as Christ loved the church,” it says. “He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect and to lead his family.”

The SBC statement also addresses the wife, who is “to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”…

Among those signing the paper, which reads, “I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention,” were:
Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson.
Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney.
National Religious Broadcasters President Brandt Gustavson.
Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.

The counterargument, I trust, is that this is a fairly orthodox statement of the Christian view of marriage. Is it? And is Huck going to be able to plead that after having put his name to a statement explicitly affirming this particular bit of doctrine? He’s not in the same relation here, in other words, as a Catholic politician would be to the Church’s gender discrimination, where one can plead disagreement with individual policies while still embracing the larger whole. Huck’s signing up here specifically for wives as subordinates. As much as I agree that Drudge exaggerated his statement about taking back America for Jesus, this sort of thing is going to come up if he’s the nominee and some voters are going to wonder about it if he can’t explain it to their satisfaction, just like some of them wonder about Mormons believing the Garden of Eden is in Missouri. He’s reaping plenty of benefits from his religious stature; these are going to be the costs. Which may explain why he’s reluctant to publish his old sermons.

So much for that. Go see what Kaus has to say about how serious Huck seems to be about the terms of his new hardline immigration policy. It’s almost as if he lifted it from Mark Krikorian for political convenience, not because he really believes in opposing amnesty in all its forms. And with that, I think/hope we’re done with Huck for the night.

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