“..take this nation back for Christ.”

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Mike Huckabee, a Republican relying on support from religious conservatives in Thursday’s hard-fought presidential caucuses, on Sunday stood by a decade-old comment in which he said, “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

In a television interview, the ordained Southern Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor made no apologies for the 1998 comment made at a Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Salt Lake City.

“It was a speech made to a Christian gathering, and, and certainly that would be appropriate to be said to a gathering of Southern Baptists,” Huckabee said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

He gave the speech the same year he endorsed the Baptist convention’s statement of beliefs on marriage that “a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.” Huckabee and his wife, Janet, signed a full-page ad in USA Today in support of the statement with 129 other evangelical leaders.

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A little over a month ago my mom called me and said: “Write it down. I’m saying it now. Mike Huckabee is going to take the Republican nomination.”

Every time she reads a story like this she’s more and not less sure she was right.

A reporter friend just told me he’s a big fan of Billy Graham — and he’d expect to hear “take this nation back from Christ” from him, but not from a presidential candidate. From a presidential candidate it’s kind of creepy.

A second reporter friend said that it’s not creepy in the context he said it — as an ordained minister speaking to Southern Baptists. If he brings that thinking to the presidency rather that regarding the job as a separate thing, that’ll be a problem, she said. She’s a committed Christian, she said — but she doesn’t go to work thinking “I have to take the media back for Christ.”

This story makes me realize I know almost nothing about Mrs. Huckabee — but I’d be interested to hear more about and from a woman who would sign a statement saying she thinks God wants her to submit to her husband’s servant leadership. If only because I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman who’d agree with that statement.

UPDATE: A Baptist female friend of mine just told me that she believes this — but that if you actually look at the Bible verses from which the “servant leadership” thing is taken you would come to the conclusion that men are also supposed to be subject to their women and that ideally you won’t end up with a guy who would use this line to tell you that he’s your leader and you are to follow him.

Last week I had another friend tell me that she doesn’t think that there’s anything supernatural about Christianity - because God created everything and nothing he created can be outside of nature.

Which leads me to believe I’m not having enough religious conversations with the people I know — and that when I do, it’s fascinating.

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