Posted on 12/13/2007 9:29:41 AM PST by Grig
Now that he has his moment in the political spotlight, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee does not want his days at the pulpit to be scrutinized.
As Huckabee has surged to the front of the Republican pack in Iowa, his religious views have drawn media and voter attention. After all, Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, has been campaigning as a "Christian leader." But he has vacillated on how far to interject faith into politics. At an early debate, he indicated he does not believe in evolution, but at a more recent debate, when he was asked by Wolf Blitzer if the creation of the Earth occurred six thousand years ago and only took six days, as stated in the Old Testament, Huckabee said, "I don't know. I wasn't there." During a question-and-answer session with students at fundamentalist Liberty University last month, he asserted that his rise in the polls has an explanation that is "beyond human" and is due to the power of his supporters' prayers. Afterward, he backtracked slightly, adding, "I'm saying that when people pray, things happen.... I'm not saying that God wants me to be elected." (At a victory rally held after Huckabee won a 1993 special election for lieutenant governor, Huckabee told his supporters that he had only won because God had intervened, according to the Texarkana Gazette.)
With Huckabee walking this fine line, his campaign has declined to make available sermons that Huckabee delivered during his preaching days.
Before beginning his political career, Huckabee was a Southern Baptist minister for 12 years in his home state of Arkansas. He assumed the pastorate at Immanuel Baptist Church in the town of Pine Bluff in 1980, at the age of 25. Six years later, he moved to Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana. In both locations, Huckabee's energy, ambition, and skills as a communicator energized his congregation. Under his leadership, each church grew.
When asked for copies of the sermons Huckabee delivered at Immanuel Church, an employee there claimed none could be found. A Beech Street Church pastor's assistant maintained that much of the archival material from Huckabee's tenure as pastor had been destroyed during a remodeling. The rest, she said, was not available to the press.
When Mother Jones contacted the Huckabee campaign and asked if it would help make his previous sermons available, the campaign replied in a one-sentence email that it had received multiple requests for such material and was "not able to accommodate" them.
Only a small sampling of Huckabee's early speeches are publicly available. While the pastor at Beech Street, Huckabee became president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. (At 34, he was the youngest person to ever preside over the 490,000-person group.) He held the office from 1989 to 1991. Several of his sermonlike speeches were featured in the convention's publications. In a 1990 speech to his fellow state Baptists, Huckabee urged the audience to hold to what he called "The 10 Commendations," including "Thou shalt love like a family" and "Thou shalt be found faithful." Huckabee also said, "It doesn't embarrass me one bit to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people."
This remark was a bolder endorsement of biblical creationism than any comment Huckabee has been willing to make while campaigning for president this year. During a CNN/YouTube debate, the Republican field was asked by a man holding a Bible, "Do you believe every word of this book?" Huckabee said that portions of the Bible should "obviously" be seen as "allegorical." He again stated that he could not know the exact meaning of parts of the Bible, saying, "There are parts of it I don't fully comprehend and understand, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite god, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it." His earlier comment about Adam and Eve suggests he takes at least Genesis literally.
Huckabee certainly has reason to be concerned about an examination of his earlier remarks and sermons. Comments he made 15 years ago about AIDS and homosexuality recently became a campaign issue. During a failed run for the U.S. Senate in 1992, Huckabee noted in response to a questionnaire, "Homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk." He suggested that the federal government commit no additional federal funding to finding a cure for AIDS, then considered by many to be a gay disease. In the same reply, Huckabee displayed callousness toward AIDS victims and an ignorance about the ways in which AIDS could be transmitted. "If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague," he wrote. "It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents." Instead of additional federal funding, said Huckabee, "An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor [,] Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research."
Seeking to explain these comments recently, Huckabee made it clear that he still sees homosexuality as sinful, but that he has softened his position on AIDS research. "If I were making those same comments today, I might make them a little differently," he said.
Huckabee has indeed mixed religion with policy previously. In 1997, when he was governor, he answered a question about capital punishment during a call-in show:
Interestingly enough, if there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued against the death penalty, I think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, "This is an unjust punishment and I deserve clemency."
Huckabee's argument: since Jesus didn't say that, according to the New Testament, capital punishment is fine. Also that year, Huckabee refused to sign legislation to assist storm victims because the measure referred to tornadoes and floods as "acts of God." Putting his name on such legislation, Huckabee explained, "would be violating my own conscience" due to the bill equating "a destructive and deadly force" as "an act of God."
In all the sermons Huckabee delivered before jumping into politics, he no doubt revealed beliefs and ideas that would be of interest to voters today. But his campaign, looking to attract evangelical Christian voters without alienating others, is not interested in seeing that material become part of the current political discourse. Huckabee the candidate is shunning Huckabee the pastor.
David Corn is the Washington D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones. Jonathan Stein is a reporter in the Washington bureau.
If his sermons are released, Huckabee will be annhilated.
That doesn’t matter to me really, unless it becomes something that he tries to infiltrate into my everyday life.
What bothers me about Huckabee is the fact that he’s liberal on just about every issue outside of gays, abortion, and guns.
Huckabee would never rise to any position of prominence in the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, let alone retain it for two years, if he deviated from the Word of God.
Do I really see Mother Jones articles being posted on Free Republic without a barf alert? Break out the Birkenstocks, power to the people, and bring back the summer of love!
bookmark
“If his sermons are released, Huckabee will be annhilated.”
That may very well be the ace Hillary has up her sleeve. Can you imagine article after article of Pastor Huckabee’s preaching cherry picked and taken out of context? They’ll be able to make him sound like the biggest idiot who ever drew breath, I’m sure.
He has no chance in the general. By the time Hillary gets done slicing and dicing him, coupled with the fact that he just threw away the votes of millions of Mormons, who, by the way, vote Republican in higher percentages than even evangelical Christians do, he has no chance. None. Republicans better wise up if they want to win this election.
Wow, this is too rich. Huckabee being criticized for his religious beliefs!!
But Huckabee criticizes Romney’s religious beliefs and is called a bigot! !
The PC folk are going to twist themselves in knots.
Romney spoke a number of times too as a religious leader. People forget that he was a Stake President, a religious leader over probably 1,500 to 2,000 people. He also served as an LDS Bishop. He’s got a number of talks (or sermons) that I would welcome to be released. I think the Romney campaign could really do some damage to the Huckabee campaign by releasing some of those talks that Romney gave in stake conference (I’m sure he’s got paper copies somewhere as there won’t be any video or audio recording of them) or other church meetings. Huckabee would look bad if he released his sermons or if he continued to refuse to release them. I’m certain he voiced some inflammatory things while Romney’s talks are going to be more than acceptable to just about any Republican that reads them.
I don’t want the primary to be a contest between LDS and Southern Baptists. Focusing on their records as Governor would be more productive.
Kind of a reach.....
Not that I give a wit about Huckabee...as I happen to think he's as big a problem as Romney.
And I'm not talking about R E L I G I O N.
I'm talking about their policies........
Good point.
It’s just a gold mine for opposition research. They’ll try to take a sentence or paragraph out of context (actually strike the “try” . . . they will take a sentence out of context surely) . . . and it will be an unfair attack.
While I may not agree with the huckster on many issue’s, when he stands up for what is right, that is good. In all honesty how can someone these days be ignorant about how the AIDS virus is spread? Leftist rubbish.
It would be a fascinating comparison, especially a blind comparison, but I won’t be holding my breath. The only relevance I can see in it would be in seeing if MH is saying one thing from the pulpit and another on the campaign trail.
I believe that was a deliberate calculation by Huckabee or his advisers. The Mormons count about 13 million members and that is a worldwide figure. The Southern Baptists alone claim about 16 million in the U.S. I’ve read that Christian Evangelicals number about 40 million but that may be low.
Huckabee was quoted: “Don’t Mormons,” he asked in an innocent voice, “believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
Huckabee is parlaying the power of religious bigotry into votes. Most politicians, of either party, will sell their soul for power. That includes politicians posing as preachers.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
In Huck’s case, his sword is religion.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.