However, I found myself feeling a little defensive of the poor, feisty women of the New Testament that you so readily dismiss as uneducated (and passive?) and therefore needing to submit to their husbands in anything. I don't think Priscilla was uneducated, do you? I don't think Lois and Eunice, who taught Timothy, were lacking either. Paul shows great respect for Lois and Eunice in the way that he talks about them and their knowledge of God (also Junia and others). Whatever Paul (and Peter) mean by their command for wives to sbumit to their husbands (who are not commanded to lead but to sacrifically love their wives), I don't think it can be because Paul thought they needed educating.

I do think that submission isn't clearly taught in the American church & if it were, there would be a lot fewer women acting as doormats or in other “straw man” examples/ways of submission.

I'm glad that the two of you fled his counsel.

I confess I still harbor some fear of slippery slope stuff, wherein it is difficult to have confidence in unpopular or uncommon interpretations that are not clear and obvious in the plain text, even though I can think of or know about all the good evidence for them in other ways.

My late therapist had some good stuff to say about how much MORE honoring it is to be your real true self with your spouse, including when it means continuing to speak up, continuing to share your opinions and thoughts and feelings, even when it leads to conflict. Relationship is about persons — and mindless submission is robotic. That said, I think you yourself talked about a submission that is NOT mindless, the kind that yields at times, usually after thorough discussion, in wisdom and love, not in slavishness.