Charm and evasion, Part Five
Mike Huckabee is never better than when he talks about religion. One of his best moment in all of the debates came months ago when someone asked him about evolution. After politely chastising the questioner for asking about a subject that has nothing to do with being president, Huckabee stated that, since the question had been asked, he would answer. He then did so in an intelligent and articulate (if not wholly persuasive) manner.
Last night, Huckabee got another question about religion and, on the surface, again handled it well. But a closer examination shows his response to be another example of charm and evasion, or (more precisely) charm and distortion.
This was the question Carl Cameron asked:
Governor Huckabee, to change the subject a little bit and focus a moment on electability. Back in 1998, you were one of about 100 people who affirmed, in a full-page ad in the "New York Times," the Southern Baptist Convention's declaration that, quote, "A wife [has] to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband."Women voters in both parties harshly criticized that. Is that position politically viable in the general election of 2008, sir?
Huckabee began his answer this way:
You know, it's interesting, everybody says religion is off limits, except we always can ask me the religious questions. So let me try to do my best to answer it. And since -- if we're really going to have a religious service, I'd really feel more comfortable if I could pass the plates, because our campaign could use the money tonight, Carl.
If he first part is a bit self-pitying -- it is Huckabee who signed the Southern Baptist Convention’s declaration and it is Huckabee who advertises himself as “a Christian candidate” – the second part is pure magic.
Next Huckabee served up a more mundane attempt at charm:
First of all, if anybody knows my wife, I don't think they for one minute think that she's going to just sit by and let me do whatever I want to. That would be an absolute total misunderstanding of Janet Huckabee.
Finally, Huckabee provided the substance of his answer:
The whole context of that passage -- and, by the way, it really was spoken to believers, to Christian believers. I'm not the least bit ashamed of my faith or the doctrines of it. I don't try to impose that as a governor and I wouldn't impose it as a president.But I certainly am going to practice it unashamedly, whether I'm a president or whether I'm not a president. But the point and it comes from a passage of scripture in the New Testament Book of Ephesians is that as wives submit themselves to the husbands, the husbands also submit themselves, and it's not a matter of one being somehow superior over the other. It's both mutually showing their affection and submission as unto the Lord.
Unfortunately for honest debate, the statement in question did not say that wives should submit themselves to husbands and husbands should submit themselves to wives. Rather, according to the New York Times, it says, a woman should ''submit herself graciously'' to her husband's leadership and that a husband should ''provide for, protect and lead his family.''
In other words, Huckabee's removes the controversial content of the statement he signed by misrepresenting what it says.
JOHN adds: Theology is one of many subjects that I generally stay away from, in part because I don't know a great deal about it. But on this particular controversy, with some trepidation, I'll offer a few comments.
In the ad that Cameron asked about, Huckabee and others congratulated the Southern Baptist Convention on its adoption of a Faith and Message confessional statement on marriage. This is, I believe, the text of the ad that Huckabee signed:
You are right because you recognized that the family was God's idea, not man's, and that marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman for a lifetime. You are right because you called husbands to sacrificially love and lead their wives.You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband's sacrificial leadership.
You are right because you affirmed that the husband and wife are of equal worth before God.
You are right because you reminded us that children are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.
More importantly, you are right because your statement is based on biblical truth.
This is the text of the Baptist statement that the ad endorsed, as it related to marital relations:
The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
Both the ad and the Southern Baptist faith statement are asymmetrical, and out of step with secular assumptions, in that they enjoin wives to "submit...graciously" while husbands "lead." The Baptist statement that was endorsed by the ad goes further in endorsing a traditional relationship in which the wife is her husband's "helper in managing the household" and in raising children.
The source cited for these principles is the Fifth Chapter of Paul's letter to the Christians at Ephesus. Paul, one of the most brilliant thinkers of human history, is sometimes reviled as the source of Christianity's Puritan streak. This is the relevant portion of his letter to the Ephesians:
Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
Paul's text is explicitly mystical, and, while it does enjoin wives to be subject to their husbands, as all Christians are "subject to one another," I think it is fair to say that Paul's emphasis is more on a mystical and spiritual equality, and less on household roles, than the Southern Baptist statement and the ad that supported it. This is, I think, especially so in the context of the world in which Paul wrote 2,000 years ago.
All of this would be nobody's business if it were simply a matter of Huckabee's religious faith or practice. But Huckabee signed a newspaper ad--I believe it was in USA Today, not the New York Times, as Cameron suggested--that applauded the SBC faith statement. Taking out an ad in USA Today was not a manifestation of private religious devotion, it was a political act. As such, it is fair game for secular scrutiny.
No doubt, as Huckabee says, he wouldn't try to impose his faith if he were to be elected President. He certainly wouldn't try to compel American wives to obey their husbands. But he clearly has sought, quite successfully, to gain political popularity by publicizing and, as in the USA Today ad, politicizing his conservative religious views. He can't expect to have it both ways: if he wants some voters to support him because he favors old-fashioned family relationships, he can't complain if other voters dislike him for the same reason. And it is unprincipled for him to respond to secular criticism by misrepresenting the views he himself has espoused, not just as a matter of private religious faith, but in the public forum of a newspaper advertisement.
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