In Utah, Gov. Mike Huckabee told Southern Baptist pastors that his election would “take this Nation back for Christ” and revealed his deeply held view that the government needed to turn to faith-based institutions to solve its problems. The comments reveal that, if elected, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, would likely expand President Bush’s controversial faith-based initiatives.
In the speech, some quotes stand out:
“The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity . . . And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior.”
“Government knows it does not have the answer, but it’s arrogant and acts as though it does, Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed.”
“I fear we will turn and hit the snooze button one more time and lose this great republic of ours.”;”I’m often asked why taxes are so high and government is so big. It’s because the faith we have in local churches has become so small. If we’d been doing what we should have — giving a dime from every dollar to help the widows, the orphans and the poor — we now wouldn’t be giving nearly 50 cents of every dollar to a government that’s doing … what we should have been doing all along.”
“I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.”
“There’s not one thing we can do in those marbled halls and domed capitols that can equal what’s done when Jesus touches the lives of a sinner.”
“I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”
The speech comes at a time when Huckabee is under fire for comments made years ago that suggested that HIV-positive gays should be “isolated” until a cure is found and constitute a threat to the nation.
For a prior column on religion in this year’s campaign, click here
For the full story on the Huckabee remarks, click here
Dershowitz just wrote an excellent book on this subject (religious agendas in government)called “Blasphemy”. The point of the book is that although the Founders were divided on the role of religion in government, Thomas Jefferson (among others) was definitely against any such involvement, and the god mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is not Huckabee’s Jesus. He makes the excellent point that America was founded on the concept of self-determination and freedom, not religous tradition of any sort. If this has worked well for the past couple centuries, it should be good enough for a few more.
Not what the country needs at this juncture.
Nor at any juncture for that matter.