Huckabee -

1 Timothy 2:11-15 would support the interpretation that tends to lean FAR away from equality and towards the "submission" interpretation. But you won't find that socio-hierarchical inequality in the Gospels, only in the later books. And as any scholarly pastor can tell you, it's selective citation to ignore the evidence found elsewhere, especially in the Gospels, as compared to the Pauline Epistles, which are fairly explicitly geared towards adapting and standardizing the new faith to the many scattered and variant congregations.*

In the Gospels, particularly as exemplified in Luke, women are treated not only with substantive equality in many ways, but even superiority-by-contrast. You're not gonna find much about women submitting to men in the Gospels. Indeed, they seem to be held in special reverence.

The differences between the Gospels and Acts and the Epistles are most instructive when viewed in context of the times.

[*--it is also notable that ALL the NT references against homosexuality come from the Epistles, and not from the Gospels.]

it's a sense of the man having Christ-like love for his wife....

Yes, but what's the relationship between Christ and the church? I would think it more akin to parents and children, to the leader and his followers. It would seem quite peculiar to see it suggested that Christ and his church are equals, and so to analogize marriage to that kind of relationship strikes me as necessarily entailing a paternalistic vision of the spousal relationship. And (again, with all due respect), I don't see what the scriptural foundation is for the proposition of "equal submission one to the other," particularly when in the very next sentence you concede (as Paul seems to have written) "[w]hen it comes to the household and family structure, the man is the spiritual head, and the wife ... submit[s] to his spiritual leadership." That this subordination is to a greater or lesser extent volitional has no bearing on the nature of the relationship. 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 ("Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband") is not to the contrary; I did, after all, call it "benevolent paternalism," and to say that Husbands and wives should display benevolence towards one another doesn't undercut or stand in tension with passages already quoted from Ephesians and Colossians.

You have to turn off your inner Alan Alda. Christianity completely changed the role of the woman...and marriage. I think the religion that's cornered the market on "retrograde conception of women's roles" is the one that mutilates women and requires them to hide their whole self under a burqha. In Christian parlance, love=sacrifice, most notably demonstrated by Christ on the cross. Can you love a wife like that? Can you? It's so much more than dominating your wife. I admit, it requires a leap of faith to get there. You also have to overlook the men who fail to do it adequately and see the genuine article before you would say the woman is denigrated in that role.

Echo that, Simon...but...

While others can explicate the reconciliatory readings of the texts and the resulting doctrines, still others (NOT just those citing scripture selectively to discredit or mock Christianity, but many followers thereof) will continue to read the texts more directly as explicitly declaring wives to be subordinate and submissive to husbands in all aspects of just about everything. Differing interpretations.

Someone else can dance on the head of that pin--as I said, it's a matter of differing interpretations and there is no disputing such matters of faith, you either accept them or you don't. If everyone agreed on everything there would be but one church. As is, those determined to use someone's faith as a disparagement will continue to assign the most objectionable reading as being shared by all (when it blatantly is not) much as wingers assign all the nutburgers of one side as being wholly representative of that side. [EX: All Ron Paulers are not 9/11 Truthers. All Democrats are not Communists. All Republicans are not Christian fundamentalists. All Libertarians are not Randites. And so on.]

As Pastor Jeff points out so well, in mainstream orthodoxy it's not a "retrograde conception of women's roles" with wives-as-pseudoslaves but a clarification of the differing roles of men and women in marriage and the church. But it's not that orthodox reading that Huckabee will get tagged with. If he doesn't clarify, he WILL be assigned the most derogatory reading as his own belief.

It certainly detracts from high ground in the struggle with fundementalism abroad. Funny how Republicans talk about Democratic flipping. The Huckster dodges creationism, women's role, taxes, clemency etc...to spin a national yarn.
And Clinton flips?

Good for you to call it.

Rudy has some real damaging issues as does Mitt. I would agree with MR below, but add that the Democrats have some serious problems too. And to make matters worse, these concern national security, the size of government, Federalism, etc.

What both sides miss at the moment is a reflection about what's happening in the world. This lack of analysis coupled with media bias is allowing the administration to float quite rudderless. France is under fire in Lebanon and Algeria. The Gulf States are listening more to the ideas of Ahmadinejad, Putin's team is consolidating, Hu calls global warming a US problem,.....

Neither side here is engaged in clear thinking. And we are left with answers like "Human Rights trumps national security" and issues like the "Christian role of the wife". Perhaps the hot air might actually make the Artic ice-free by 2013 as Gore predicts.

I think Simon is quite right that there is something spectacularly jarring and unacceptable in the Huckster's signing on. I suggest to Raf, no insult intended, that the Father, deriving Woman from Adam's ribs as an answer to Adam's feeling alone says it all. The Paternal role seems clear enough in the Bible and I wonder what Ms. God has to say on the subject. Chirility should not become a religious concept for 21 century Americans.