Download or read book Hopes for Better Spouses written by A. G. Roeber and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Protestant debates about spousal relations and the meaning of marriage began in a forgotten international dispute some 300 years ago. The Lutheran-Pietist ideal of marriage as friendship and mutual pursuit of holiness battled with the idea that submission defined spousal roles. Exploiting material culture artifacts, broadsides, hymns, sermons, private correspondence, and legal cases on three continents -- Europe, Asia, and North America -- A. G. Roeber reconstructs the roots and the dimensions of a continued debate that still preoccupies international Protestantism and its Catholic and Orthodox critics and observers in the twenty-first century.