Bachmann submission

People are still weighing in on Michelle Bachmann divine obligation to be submissive to her husband.

The conservative/evangelical Christian Post has several pieces on the topic: Napp Nazworth, Was Bachmann's Answer on Being a Submissive Wife Biblically Correct? 08/17/2011; Anugrah Kumar, Bachmann Repeats: I'm 'Submissive,' Not Subservient to My Husband 08/15/2011; Stephanie Samuel, Bachmann 'Submissive' Question Ignites Debate Over Marriage, Sexism 08/13/2011. Samuel notes that Bachmann gave a more definite answer to the question of submitting to her husband to Newsweek than she did at the Iowa debate last week:

Newsweek also asked Bachmann about her submissive role to her husband, Marcus.

She told the magazine that she respects her husband but clarified, "In the White House I would be the decision maker."

Kumaar finds Bachmann dancing around the question on CBS:

"Congresswoman, what do you mean wives should be submissive to their husbands?" the CBS host asked. "Well, there was a debate earlier this week and that question was asked in the debate and for my husband and I submission means respect, mutual respect," replied Bachmann, who won the crucial Ames Straw Poll last week.

"I respect my husband, he respects me. We have been married 33 years, we have a great marriage, we built a business together and had five children together, we raised 23 foster children together in our home. And respecting each other listening to each other is what that means."

O'Donnell then asked if Bachmann would use a different word today other than "submissive." "You know," Bachmann answered, "I guess it depends on what word people are used to, but respect is really what it means." O’Donnell persisted. "Do you think submissive means subservient?" the host asked. "Not to us," Bachmann replied without reacting.

Julie Ingersoll will be surprised if Bachmann ever gives a straightforward explanation of her position on wifely submission. She writes in Can a Submissive Wife be President? Michele Bachmann says Yes Religion Dispatches 08/12/2011. Noting that Bachmann's evasive response echoes the vocabulary of what Ingersoll calls the "complementarian" variety of submission theology, she writes:

In Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, likely the most important the articulation of the complementarian position (I’ll bet five bucks Bachmann has this on her bookshelf), authors John Piper and Wayne Grudem argue that it violates women's essential nature to be in authority over men in any situation. Apparently (since she is running for president) Michelle Bachmann does not agree with their position entirely — although functioning as president with the "covering" of the authority of her husband could be reconciled within it. Asking her, and any other candidate who invokes submission theology, how it would apply to their actions as president seems entirely appropriate to me.

Bachmann still hasn't answered — and she won't — because there are still a lot of Americans who think women should submit men and stay home raising children. And she wants their votes. [my emphasis in bold]

Nazworth reports Southern Baptist minister Curt Bradford also dancing around the question:

"The truly Christ-like husband-leader is one who considers the submission issue to be about his submitting to God and leading or influencing his wife and family to submit to God as well. Her submission to his leadership is a matter of trust in her husband's walk with God. The husband who simply considers submission to be an authority issue has neglected the Ephesians 5:21 charge to Christians that they submit to one another or be subject to one another as normal for Christians. This is about a functional aspect of biblical community," Bradford said.

But he eventually gets to the nub of it:

"The wife’s submission to God and then to her husband’s leadership is not an indication of her worth, or weakness. Rather, it is an indication of her acceptance of the way the Creator of the universe constructed sociological systems for Christ [sic] followers."

He also interviewed a Presbyterian lay leader Carmen Fowler LaBerge, who was clear enough in her response:

“Having said that, the answer to the question is 'yes.' Any Christian who would serve as president would do so in submission to Christ. As a Christian wife, I submit to the headship of my husband in as far as he follows Christ. And just as Jesus does not 'lord' his headship over his disciples, neither does my husband 'lord' his headship over me. There is a joyful freedom in knowing that there is a person who has your back, covers you no matter what, and who would sacrifice himself for your honor and welfare."

LaBerge added, however, that she does not think Bachmann would be elected president if she had given that answer, but, "I think it is the right and righteous answer to the question for a woman speaking out of an authentically biblical worldview."

On the face of it, "I submit to the headship of my husband in as far as he follows Christ" could be a huge loophole. But we're unlikely to hear Michelle Bachmann use it because it would open up other unpleasant lines of questioning.

Frank Schaeffer, a recovering Religious Rightist and a former Christianist leader himself, explains in Are Michele Bachmann's Views About 'Christian Submission' Even More Extreme Than She's Letting On? Alternet 08/15/2011 explains submission theology in more detail and also why he thinks Bachmann's evasive response to the issue is "a barefaced lie."

Tags: christian right, michelle bachmann

Bachmann and the press: when will the standard script emerge?

Glenn Greenwald provides us a timely caution about getting caught up in the Presidential campaign spectacle that our collapsed media culture treats as "reality-TV" entertainment to the exclusion of substantive reporting: The misery of the protracted presidential campaign season 08/16/2011.

The article also contains some fairly non-critical praise of Old Right isolationist Ron "Papa Doc" Paul, good friend of the Patriot Militia movement. Ron Paul is against crony capitalism? Please. Papa Doc wants to do away with pretty much all government regulations on business. It would be more accurate to call him an advocate for unimpeded crony capitalism. And, in his fondness for the idea of third party candidacies, Greenwald manages to engage in some superficial "both sides do it" griping about Democrats and Republicans.

This clip from CNN reporter Don Lemon also got me thinking about how our broken media cover Presidential candidates: Don Lemon Calls Out Michele Bachmann, Thanks Sarah Palin. Lemon has apparently made it a regular schtick of his to show politicians repeating the same talking points over and over. In this case Michelle Bachmann. The clip shows her repeating the same phrases on various Sunday morning talks shows. And it winds up praising non-candidate Sarah Palin who wasn't on all the Sunday morning shows for being oh-so-much more responsive than Bachmann. (?!?)

Not having seen any of the original segments, I can't say whether Lemon is taking a cheap shot or not here. But it reminds me of the way pool reporters on the Presidential campaign trail have acted in the past. As Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby documented repeatedly in the days before he fell in love with the Tea Party and decided that liberal bloggers were the bane of the media universe, the pool reporters behave a lot like a group of fraternity and sorority party animals on a trip to see an out-of-state football game. They fell in love with the great Maverick McCain and his honor and moderation after spending time on his press bus in 2000 drinking with him and listening to his stories about war and sex. It's not an environment conducive to critical thinking and careful reflection.This is one important source of the groupthink campaign reporters use to develop their handy and often indelible scripts about the candidates.

And part of what following a candidate on the campaign trail means is that they hear the candidate speak over and over, week after week, often several times a day. And candidates tend to say a lot of the same things and work from a basic stump speech, to the point that the reporters along for the ride get to the point they can recite their own version of it. So what sounds mindlessly repetitive to one of the pool reporters may be fresh and original to large parts of the candidates' audiences.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly done mind the press highlighting Bachmann's s glazed-eyed zombie habits. Jesus' General describes that Charles Manson stare of hers as "the "Eyes of the Anointed," the eyes God employs to mark His chosen." (It's a satire site, people!) "They are the eyes Mrs Bachmann uses when she rebukes sorcerers, witches, and teachers." Joan Walsh uses a phrase from a geezer rock song to describe that look, writing that Rick Perry went "to Iowa to save the GOP from the little Christian lady with the faraway eyes."

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos sees a standard script for Bachmann congealing already: Emerging media narrative: Bachmann is running a 'celebrity' campaign 08/15/2011.

Will any of those scripts come to include serious questions about her Christian Right theocratic ideas and allegiances? Don't bet on it.

Tags: establishment press, glenn greenwald, mainstream media, mainstream press, michelle bachmann

A dubious manifestation of "civility" on Michelle Bachmann's religio-political beliefs

I have to wonder if some liberals aren't so wedded to the idea that religion shouldn't matter in politics that they fell compelled to pretend that it doesn't matter. Even in the face of a political movement that dominates today's Republican Party and has clear theocratic goals. But the democratic tradition of separation of church and state didn't evolve over centuries by advocates of democracy pretending that actual clerical grabs at secular power just weren't taking place.

What made me think of this was this surprising Huffington Post piece by Jason Linkins, Michele Bachmann Asked If She Is A 'Submissive Wife' At Iowa GOP Debate 08/11/2011. Bachmann has publicly stated her position on the submission of wives to their husbands. As recently as 2006, she told a church congregation, "The Lord says: Be submissive, wives. You are to be submissive to your husbands." She has specifically said that as a young woman, she decided to become a tax attorney because her husband directed her to do so and she believed that a Christian woman should be an obedient wife.

It's a perfectly legitimate question whether she would allow her husband's preferences to determine her official actions as President. Fundamentalist fears in 1960 that John Kennedy would be taking political order from the Pope may have been founded on polemical misunderstandings of the Catholic Christian faith. But given the role that the Church had played in relation to the Italian Fascist and German Nazi regimes, and then its intense conservatism in the postwar period, together with the Vatican's position that the Catholic Church should be state church, had also produced considerable criticism and valid skepticism among liberals in the period between the end of the Second World War and 1960 as to the Catholic Church's role in politics.

Kennedy addressed the question about Church control of the American government during the Presidency for which he was campaigning in an address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on 09/12/1960:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all. [my emphasis]

It's difficult to imagine even an Democratic Presidential candidate today making such straightforward assertions of his belief in secular government. They would feel obliged to couch it in praise for "people of faith" and the good works of "faith-based organizations."

I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all and obligated to none, who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require of him to fulfill; and whose fulfillment of his Presidential office is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.

... I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

But if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely possible -- when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise. [my emphasis]

Can Michelle Bachmann make such a straightforward statement of her religious independence? Can she tell us directly how her statement that her religious conscience demands that wives must "be submissive to your husbands" affects her willingness to act as the elected President sworn to defend the secular Constitution of the United States?

When conservative Byron York posed a version of the question to her in the Iowa debates last night, she gave the anodyne response that to her and her husband Marcus, "submission" means respect:

I respect my husband. He's a wonderful godly man and a great father. And he respects me as his wife. That's how we operate our marriage. We respect each other. We love each other. And I've been so grateful that we've been able to build a home together. We have five wonderful children and 23 foster children. We built a business together and a life together, and I'm very proud of him.

Which is the kind of sugary description of family life one would expect to hear at some Christian fundamentalist counseling retreat from a nice Christian lady giving her "testimony" of her marriage. With of course a few obligatory references to ups and downs and the occasional argument.

But in plain English, "submission" doesn't mean "respect." It means subservience and obedience. And Bachmann's response doesn't address the relevant and legitimate question: would Bachmann follow orders from her husband if he directed her how to exercise her responsibilities as President of the United States? We're talking about the most powerful political office in the world, whose occupant can launch a nuclear war on command based on her own authority. She stated publicly and clearly that she made her first major career choice based on her husbands direction in accord with her understanding that she was Biblically commanded to be "submissive" to husband Marcus. She should be willing and able to say exactly how she understands that Biblical command affecting her decision-making as President of the United States. Repeating for the thousandth time that she's had five kids and 23 foster children doesn't answer that question.

And how does Jason Linkins at the supposedly progressive Huffington Post react? He scolded that naughty conservative Byron York for even asking the question!

As I said at the time of the Post profile, "Bachmann's really comfortable being her own woman. She gets by in the House's "boy's club" just fine. When she wanted to issue a response to the State Of The Union address that would steal away from her party's official response, she asked for neither permission nor forgiveness. If Bachmann's been spending her career doing her husband's bidding rather than her own, it's not remarkably apparent." I'm honestly surprised this even came up as a question.

Of course, in the case of the first part of her career as a tax attorney, she has said explicitly and publicly that she undertook it against her inclinations at the direction of her husband in accordance with her understanding of a Biblical obligation of wives to be submissive to their husbands. And this is the religious ideology of the conservative Protestant groups with whom Bachmann so closely and so publicly associates herself.

But Jason Linkins doesn't find it "apparent" that anyone should ask a candidate for President of the United States about such a thing!

This is not a question about her denominational affiliation, much less about her acceptance of the Christian faith. It is a question about her own publicly-expressed view that wives are required by God to be "submissive" to their husbands even in their career decisions.

Tags: jason linkins, michelle bachmann

Michele Bachmann anti-sharia but Christian Reconstructionist?

Matt Taibbi's informative and characteristically irreverently critical profile of Republican Presidential Candidate and Tea Party darling Michelle Bachmann, Michele Bachmann's Holy War Rolling Stone 06/22/2011, includes a parenthetical comment articulating something I've been thinking:

This background is significant considering Bachmann's leadership role in the Tea Party, a movement ostensibly founded on ideas of limited government. Bachmann says she believes in a limited state, but she was educated in an extremist Christian tradition that rejects the entire notion of a separate, secular legal authority and views earthly law as an instrument for interpreting biblical values. As a legislator, she not only worked to impose a ban on gay marriage, she also endorsed a report that proposed banning anyone who "espoused or supported Shariah law" from immigrating to the U.S. (Bachmann seems so unduly obsessed with Shariah law that, after listening to her frequent pronouncements on the subject, one begins to wonder if her crazed antipathy isn't born of professional jealousy.) [my emphasis]

Even assuming for purposes of discussion that "anti-sharia" advocates actually know what sharia is (Islamic religious law), the US system of laws is a secular system. US laws and courts, including on the state level, cannot enforce religous law on either believers or unbelievers. We could get into some interesting hair-splitting over how religious law is regarded in the context of family law or contract law; but it doesn't change the basic reality that US law is secular law and religious law cannot be applied as such by American courts. (Or European courts for the most part, either; they have their "anti-sharia" hysterics there, too.)

Conservative fear-mongers over "sharia" like Bachmann can't easily acknowledge this. Pointing out that it would require a change in the entire Constitutional order to impose sharia law in the US wouldn't make it sound like an immediate threat that average Christian white folks in America should be in a panic over.

But Christian nationalists in the US also embrace a concept, rooted in the ultra-Protestant Christian Reconstructionist thinking, that the Constitution is founded on Christian religion and Christian law. And that the US government and courts can and should impose Christian religious law on believers and non-believers alike. This is a very widespread view among fundamentalist and Pentecostal political activists.

Warning of the dangers of religious law in the form of sharia, Islamic religious law, is a projection of what Christian nationalists profess to want in the US, although they are often diffident and evasive about it when dealing with non-believers, including Christians who don't share the Christian nationalist faith. (See Julie Ingersoll, Washington Post Story Gets Christian Reconstructionism Wrong Religion Dispatches 08/16/2010.)

Taibbi explains how Bachmann uses her I'm-as-dumb-as-you-are style of populism, which incorporates a great deal of white-Christian-as-victim attitude:

"There's always this mechanism available to Bachmann," says Elwyn Tinklenberg, the Democrat she defeated in the congressional election that fall. "No matter what they say, there is this attitude that 'these poor Christians are being picked on.'" Cecconi agrees, saying that Bachmann has discovered her blunders only serve to underscore her martyrdom. "I've seen her parlay that into 'Look how downtrodden I am,'" she says. "It works for her."

This is also a useful description of how that victim pose works for her and her fellow Christian nationalists:

Snickering readers in New York or Los Angeles might be tempted by all of this to conclude that Bachmann is uniquely crazy. But in fact, such tales by Bachmann work precisely because there are a great many people in America just like Bachmann, people who believe that God tells them what condiments to put on their hamburgers, who can't tell the difference between Soviet Communism and a Stafford loan, but can certainly tell the difference between being mocked and being taken seriously. When you laugh at Michele Bachmann for going on MSNBC and blurting out that the moon is made of red communist cheese, these people don't learn that she is wrong. What they learn is that you're a dick, that they hate you more than ever, and that they're even more determined now to support anyone who promises not to laugh at their own visions and fantasies.

Bachmann is the champion of those tens of millions of Americans who have read and enjoyed the Left Behind books, the apocalyptic works of Christian fiction that posit an elaborate fantasy in which all the true believers are whisked off to heaven with a puff of smoke at the outset of Armageddon. Here on Earth, meanwhile, the guilty are bent to the will of a marauding Satan who appears at first in the guise of a smooth-talking, handsome, educated, pro-government, superficially pacifist, internationalist politician named Nicolae Carpathia — basically, Barack Obama. [my emphasis]

If Taibbi seems to express the point harshly, his way of putting emphasizes why apologetic reassurances from liberals that they really don't hate religion are not going to be persuasive to Christian nationalists. This is the same technique that Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman found in their study of anti-Semitic extremists published in 1949, Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (1949)

Seizing on the "simple folk" theme as a pretext for fostering an aggressively anti-intellectual attitude, the agitator describes his American Americans as a people of sound instincts and, he is happy to say, little sophistication. He suggests that, on one level, the conflict between his followers and the enemy is nothing but a clash between simple minds and wise guys, level-headed realists and crazy sophisticates. He delights his followers by proclaiming his own lack of intellectuality ...

He raises a point that should be a legitimate issue in the campaign:

When Bachmann finished her studies in Oklahoma, Marcus instructed her to do her postgraduate work in tax law — a command Michele took as divinely ordained. She would later profess to complete surprise at God's choice for her field of study. "Tax law? I hate taxes," she said. "Why should I go and do something like that?" Still, she sucked it up and did as she was told. "The Lord says: Be submissive, wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands."

Here she's saying as a matter of her Christian faith, she believes she should obey her husband's orders. It's an entirely sensible and legitimate question for opponents and journalists to asks whether she applies that approach to decisions she would be making as President.

Tags: 2012 election, michelle bachmann, radical right