Anderson Cooper challenges Alan Grayson

For many years I refused to vote for Democratic candidates.  Partly because I was a “social conservative.”  But more because the Democrats made me feel so unwelcome.

As a Christian believer I felt that the Democrats were being dismissive and elitist.  And I felt that they were hostile to the contributions that professing Christians could offer our communities.

I was encouraged by then candidate Obama’s willingness to speak to Rick Warren concerning his Christian faith, and his understanding that churches, regardless of racial constitution, had much to offer. I felt the fresh winds of tolerance moving in a party that I had long considered anti-Christian.

Recently, however I was reminded of my initial impression of the Democratic Party.  Democratic Representative Alan Grayson recently labeled Republican challenger Former Florida state Rep. Dan Webster as Taliban Dan in an ad showing Afganistan women in burqas.  The narrator intones:

Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom – in Afghanistan, in Iran and right here in Central Florida …

As various positions were attributed to Sen. Webster, his voice could be heard saying  “she should submit to me.”

The problem with this, of course, was the lifting of these words from their initial context, as CNN’s Anderson Cooper demonstrated by airing part of the presentation made to a Christian group, in which Senator Webster was sharing his faith perspective and offering suggestions for an enriched marriage. His actual statement was:

So, write a journal. Second, find a verse. I have a verse for my wife. … “Don’t pick the ones that say, ‘she should submit to me.’ It’s in the Bible, but pick the ones that you’re supposed to do.

So instead, ‘Love your wife, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it,’ as opposed to, ‘Wives submit yourselves to your husband.’ She can pray that if she wants to, but don’t you pray it.”

I personally have taught this message many times, and I immediately recognized Mr. Webster’s respectful use of Ephesians, chapter 5:

22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Mr. Webster may hold some views I do not accept, but there was nothing wrong or extreme with that part of the religious presentation from which the words were sampled.

Alan Grayson owes an apology to the Christian husbands trying to improve their marriages, to his Republican challenger, and possibly to the Apostle Paul.

Christian teaching does not uphold male dominance; it does teach male leadership in the home. It’s up to each married couple to prayerfully work out how these principles are applied. Mr. Webster was attempting to assist the men in his Nashville, Tennessee audience as they sought to enhance the quality of their marital relationships.

To equate the teachings of Jesus and early Christian teachers with Taliban-like abuse of women is extremely offensive. Mr. Grayson may think he has targeted only Mr. Webster but he has created extensive collateral damage within the Christian community.