“A wife is to submit graciously to…her husband.”

In 1998, the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention decided to update the provisions of the “Baptist Faith and Message,” a set of principles adopted in 1925 to provide guidance to the millions of members of Southern Baptist churches in the United States.

The text of the 1925 version primarily focused on fundamental aspects of the Southern Baptist faith, which are generally similar to other Christian Protestant faiths.

There was nothing in it about the roles of husbands and wives or the definition of marriage.

Back then, what was “normal” with respect to such things was taken for granted.

Seventy years later, in the late 1990s, things were different.

Women had increasingly become “liberated.”

Homosexuals were increasingly coming out of the closet.

There was even talk of (gasp!) gay marriage.

So, in June of 1998, at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the church leaders decided it was time to add a new section to the Baptist Faith and Message that addressed these “issues.”

The new section, titled “THE FAMILY,” was unanimously adopted by Convention members on June 9, 1998.

The first part had some language that took a clear shot at the newfangled notion of gay marriage.

“Marriage,” it opined, “is the uniting of one man and one woman.”

Of course, it wasn’t any big surprise that Southern Baptists opposed gay marriage (and homosexuality in general). They had already staked out that turf.

But there was some other language in the new section that caught the attention of reporters and quickly generated nationwide news coverage, a firestorm of criticism and many political cartoons and jokes.

The most controversial sentence was in the third paragraph, which says:

“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.”

The doctrine is loosely based on a Biblical quote, Ephesians 5:22-33. Those verses, which don’t actually say wives should “graciously” be “servants” to their husbands, are given in the King James Version as follows:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

For weeks, the Baptist Convention’s new rule about wives submitting graciously to their husbands was discussed, lambasted and lampooned by newspaper columnists, TV commentators, feminists and comedians.

Naturally, many women and social liberals attacked and mocked the idea that wives should graciously submit to their husbands, viewing it as incredibly outdated, wrongheaded and insulting to women.

And, of course, TV comics couldn’t resist commenting on the flap.

For example, Jay Leno quipped:

“The Southern Baptists issued a new ruling this week stating that a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband. What if a husband wants to lead her and the family to Disneyland on Gay Day? What do you do then? What if your husband’s an idiot?”

Given Hillary Clinton’s imminent nomination as presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, it’s especially interesting to read one of the paragraphs in the Associated Press story about the flap over the submissive wives doctrine.

It notes that in 1998 the most visible member of the Southern Baptist Church was President Bill Clinton. The reporter who wrote the story, Kristen Moulton, was told by White House spokesman Mike McCurry that Bill Clinton “was aware of the convention's action and had joked about pointing it out to the first lady.”

The criticism and jokes had no effect on the policies of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The sentence about a wife submitting graciously to her husband remained and still exists in the current Baptist Faith and Message text.

At least, it still exists on paper and online.

I haven’t seen any studies on how strictly it’s adhered to in Southern Baptist households.

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Non-submissive related reading: books featuring quotations by women…

The ironic dual anniversary of two famous Clinton quotations

Hillary Clinton looms so large in the political landscape today, it’s hard to remember when she didn’t.

But, in fact, she was relatively unknown to most Americans until January 26, 1992.

On that Sunday night, Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton appeared together on 60 Minutes, in a heavily watched interview with Steve Kroft that aired right after the Superbowl.

Their goal was to defuse “rumors” about Bill’s extramarital affairs with Gennifer Flowers and other women while he was Governor of Arkansas.

They didn’t quite directly address the “bimbo eruption” issue.

However, Bill did admit he had “caused pain” in their marriage. And they both tried to make it clear that they loved each other and their marriage was sound. 

The most remembered quote from the interview was uttered by Hillary, when she said (emphatically):

“You know, I’m not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette. I’m sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together. And, you know, if that’s not enough for people, then, heck, don’t vote for him.”

In other words, Hillary was standing by man — like in Tammy Wynette’s hit 1968 country music song “Stand By Your Man.” 

The Clintons’ politically-adept performance that night boosted their public profile and Bill’s campaign. He went on to receive the Democratic nomination and get elected as President.

But the way Hillary stated her “standing by my man” position was highly offensive to fans of Tammy Wynette and to Tammy herself.

Tammy made it known to Hillary and the press that she was “mad as hell” about Hillary’s insulting comment on 60 Minutes.

TIME magazine quoted her as saying: “Nowhere in that song did I say, ‘be a doormat, take any abuse.’”

Other news stories quoted Tammy using variations of that line, including: “That song doesn't say be a doormat”; “Nowhere does it say be a doormat and let this man walk on you”; and, “That song doesn't say be a doormat for anybody.”

She also wrote a letter to Hillary that said: “With all that is in me, I resent your caustic remark. I believe you have offended every true country-music fan and every person who has made it on their own with no one to take them to the White House.”

The soon-to-be First Lady of the United States quickly apologized to “The First Lady of Country Music.”

Hillary told reporters: “I didn’t mean to hurt Tammy Wynette as a person. I happen to be a country-western fan, If she feels like I’ve hurt her feelings, I'm sorry about that.”

Hillary also telephoned Tammy to apologize directly. It apparently worked. Wynette later performed at a fundraiser for Bill, at Hillary’s request.

Six years later, Bill Clinton was back in the hot seat over a new bimbo eruption. Reports had surfaced that he’d been having an affair with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky.

So, on January 26, 1998 — exactly six years after Hillary made her famous Tammy-bashing remark — Bill held a press conference to address the issue.

In it, he created an ironic dual anniversary of two famous Clinton quotes when he forcefully claimed:

       “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky!”

Of course, as we all learned later, he did — depending on what the meaning of did is.

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Related reading, viewing and listening…

 

Looking back at some famous quotes generated by the “Lewinsky Scandal”

In addition to generating a lot of political fireworks, the “Lewinsky Scandal” involving President Bill Clinton and 22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky generated several famous quotations.

On January 26, 1998, President Bill Clinton held a press conference in which he famously and vehemently denied having an affair with Lewinsky, saying:

       “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky!”

Of course, months later, after a grand jury investigation, he admitted that he did.

But on January 27, 1998, the day after Bill’s initial high profile denial, First Lady Hillary Clinton defended her husband and uttered another now-famous quote.

She said it in an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show.

Lauer politely but persistently asked tough questions about Bill’s “alleged” affair with Monica and about the so-called “Whitewater” investigation into the Clintons’ past financial affairs, which was being conducted by independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Hillary gamely stood by her husband, just as she did six years earlier, during the Clintons’ game-changing January 26, 1992 interview on 60 Minutes, when she huffed: “I’m not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette.”

In the Today Show interview, when Lauer asked her about Lewinsky, Clinton said (apparently unaware of the multiple ironies): “I think the important thing now is to stand as firmly as I can and say that, you know, the president has denied these allegations on all counts, unequivocally.”

She went on to say she was “very concerned about the tactics being used and the kind of intense political agenda” of people who were criticizing and investigating the Clintons.

She told Matt:

“The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

Hillary’s use that day made the term “vast right-wing conspiracy” a widely-known political phrase. But she didn’t coin it.

It had been used years before in news stories unrelated to the Clintons.

In 1991, a story about British movies in the Detroit News said: “Thatcher-era Britain produced its own crop of paranoid left-liberal films... All posited a vast right-wing conspiracy propping up a reactionary government ruthlessly crushing all efforts at opposition under the guise of parliamentary democracy.”

An Associated Press story in 1995 used the phrase in a story about the Oklahoma City bombing, saying it was the work of a few malcontents rather than “some kind of vast right-wing conspiracy.”

In the fall of 1998, the Lewinsky Scandal went on to generate yet another famous quote.

On August 17, 1998, President Clinton gave videotaped testimony to the grand jury. The video was released publicly by the House Judiciary Committee of Congress on September 21, 1998.

When it was, the world heard Bill’s legendary response when asked if he and Monika had previously lied when they said there is no sexual relation between them. He said, straight-faced:

“It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If ‘is’ means is and never has been, that’s one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”

I am not now and never have been part of any right-wing (or left-wing) conspiracy. But I have to say, I think that “meaning of the word ‘is’” quote, in particular, is an example of why Bill got the nickname “Slick Willie.”

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Related reading…

George H.W. Bush and “the vision thing”...

It’s impossible to predict what quotes will come to be indelibly associated with each president of the United States. However, the famous quotes most presidents are remembered for include some they may regret and be haunted by later.

One of the quotes by George Herbert Walker Bush in that category is his remark about “the vision thing.”

In January 1987, Bush was near the end of his second term as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. It was common knowledge that he planned to run for President in 1988.

However, some critics — including some in Bush’s own Republican Party — viewed Bush as a politician who lacked the ability to clearly articulate his fundamental beliefs and policies, as Reagan did so well.

The January 26, 1987 issue of Time magazine included an article by journalist Robert Ajemian exploring this topic. It was titled “Where Is the Real George Bush?”

One of the anecdotes in that story made “the vision thing” a famous/infamous quotation.

“Colleagues say that while Bush understands thoroughly the complexities of issues, he does not easily fit them into larger themes,” Ajemian wrote. “This has led to the charge that he lacks vision. It rankles him. Recently he asked a friend to help him identify some cutting issues for next year’s campaign. Instead, the friend suggested that Bush go alone to Camp David for a few days to figure out where he wanted to take the country. ‘Oh,’ said Bush in clear exasperation, ‘the vision thing.’ The friend’s advice did not impress him.”

Bush’s comment about “the vision thing” was quickly picked by the press and political commentators and used against him by his critics.

Bush defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis in the November 1988 presidential election. And, he won despite allegations of his “vision problems” and other indignities, such as the October 19, 1987 issue of Newsweek that featured a cover headline essentially calling him a “wimp” (“GEORGE BUSH: FIGHTING THE ‘WIMP FACTOR’”).

However, Bush’s lack of “the vision thing” as president, especially in terms of domestic policies, was seen as a factor in his defeat by Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential race. And, today, the vision quote is still commonly cited in bios of Bush. For example, even the Bush bio posted on the official U.S. Senate website says:

“Bush...suffered from his lack of what he called ‘the vision thing,’ a clarity of ideas and principles that could shape public opinion and influence Congress. ‘He does not say why he wants to be there,’ complained columnist George Will, ‘so the public does not know why it should care if he gets his way.’”

As noted by a brief entry in Wikipedia, “the vision thing” went on to become a metonym, i.e., a shorthand figure of speech. It is now used as a description “for any politician’s failure to incorporate a greater vision in a campaign, and has often been applied in the media to other politicians or public figures.”

Ironically, January 26th also happens to be the anniversary of two quotes that Bill and Hillary Clinton later regretted. For more about those quotes, click this link...

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Further reading: books about presidential quotations…