Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Michelle Goldberg, Mike Huckabee, conservative golem, Guardian, December 19, 2007

Leading conservative pundits have discovered that the Republican electorate is dominated by Christian fundamentalists, and they are shocked, shocked! Aghast at the rise of the backwoods populist preacher-turned-governor Mike Huckabee, now polling first in Iowa with only two weeks until the caucuses, they’ve suddenly divined the value of secular politics, of knowledge gained by studying something other than the Bible.

“There is a sense in Iowa now that faith has been heightened as a determining factor in how to vote, that such things as executive ability, professional history, temperament, character, political philosophy and professed stands are secondary, tertiary,” an alarmed Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal last Friday. “But they are not, and cannot be. They are central. Things seem to be getting out of kilter, with the emphasis shifting too far.”

National Review’s Rich Lowry concurred. “[N]ominating a southern Baptist pastor running on his religiosity would be rather overdoing it,” he sniffed. “Social conservatism has to be part of the Republican message, but it can’t be the message in its entirety.” In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer’s column was titled An Overdose of Public Piety. “This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it’s only going to get worse,” he wrote.

Paul Vitello, Small Town Cheers Huckabee’s Embrace of Faith - New York Times, December 21, 2007

DIKE, Iowa — He came to town this week dressed in a dark pinstriped suit and cowboy boots, advocating lower taxes, death to the Internal Revenue Service and restoration of the words “Merry Christmas” and “Jesus Christ” to the American lexicon.

And Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister who rose to the first tier of Republican presidential candidates on the strength of his Christian bona fides, was received by supporters as he returned to Iowa this week like the second coming of Santa Claus.At rallies, they posed their red-sweatered children on his knee for photographs, as if he were the man in the red suit at the mall. They gave him standing ovations when he said the words they wanted to hear.

“I know this is probably a very controversial thing, but may I say to you, Merry Christmas!” Mr. Huckabee told an audience of 200 in Marshalltown on Thursday morning, as the crowd rose to its feet.

Clearly delighted over a controversy set off by a recent campaign advertisement in which he says “what really matters” this time of year is not the presidential campaign but “the celebration of the birth of Christ,” Mr. Huckabee has missed no opportunity in his speeches to his core supporters of evangelical voters to utter those words, underlining the Christ part.

“What’s wrong with our country, what is wrong with our culture, is that you can’t say the name Jesus Christ without people going completely berserk,” Mr. Huckabee told a crowd in Dike, a tiny farm town about 80 miles northeast of Des Moines, where people also stood to applaud.

Robert D. Novak - Baptists Not on Board - washingtonpost.com, December 20, 2007

When Mike Huckabee went to Houston on Tuesday to raise funds for his fast-rising, money-starved presidential candidacy, a luncheon for the ordained Baptist minister was arranged by evangelical Christians. On hand was Judge Paul Pressler, a hero to Southern Baptist Convention reformers. But he was a nonpaying guest who supports Fred Thompson for president.

Huckabee greeted Pressler warmly. That contrasted with Huckabee’s anger two months ago when they encountered each other in California. The former governor of Arkansas took issue then with comments by Pressler, a former Texas appeals court judge, that Huckabee had been a slacker in the war against secularists within the Baptist church.

The warmth in Texas and hostility in California reflects the dual personality of the pastor-politician who has broken out of the presidential campaign’s second tier. Huckabee can come across as either a Reagan or a Nixon. More than personality explains why not all his Baptist brethren have signed on the dotted line for Huckabee. He did not join the “conservative resurgence” that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago.

David Lightman, Mormonism an issue for Romney in South Carolina, McClatchy Newspapers, 12/18/2007

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Something about Mitt Romney just isn’t right with Bill Burdette. And something about Mike Huckabee is.

“Romney’s from Utah and he’s Mormon,” said the 41-year-old software engineer from Iva, S.C. “Huckabee’s from the South and he’s Baptist.”

Understand, Burdette said, he’s not choosing his candidate based on religion, but Huckabee, a Baptist minister who was the governor of Arkansas for 10 and a half years, is someone he’s comfortable with.

That’s Romney’s problem throughout this crucial early-voting state, where a win Jan. 19 by the former Massachusetts governor would give him a huge boost in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

An estimated 63 percent of Republican primary voters in South Carolina are “born again” or evangelical Christians, so a Romney win would be hailed as dramatic proof that his Mormon faith wasn’t a big factor in voter judgments.

Except that evidence from polls and visits throughout the state shows that it is.

Munson: It is perfectly natural that a Baptist minister would send a message to the members of his church, and to his family and friends, reminding them that Christmas is “really” about celebrating the birth of Christ. But Huckabee’s Christmas message is a political ad paid for the Huckabee campaign to be broadcast in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to influence the January caucuses and primaries in these states. The implicit message in this seemingly innocuous videotaped Christmas card is that “real” Christians should vote for Huckabee. This in turn implies that the simple fact of being a “real” Christian is directly relevant to one’s qualifications for the presidency. Most of the people who support Huckabee assume this is true since they see the US as a Christian nation. The fact that current polls show Huckabee defeating all his opponents in Iowa and South Carolina demonstrates the influence of white evangelicals in these states. Huckabee is much weaker in states like Michigan, New Hampshire, and Florida, all of which also hold primaries in January 2008. But national polls show Huckabee narrowly trailing front-runner Giuliani.

Ironically, given that Huckabee attributes his “surge” to God, his views on foreign policy are more sensible than those of the other leading Republican candidates, although he is much less sensible than pragmatic realists like Senator Chuck Hagel.

Mike Huckabee for President, New Ad: What Really Matters, December 17, 2007

Liz Clarke, A Higher Power - washingtonpost.com, December 15, 2007

“I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer,” he told a group of pastors on the eve of the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention. “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.” He concluded that speech with words he says he’d phrase differently today: “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

Munson: If only 27% of Iowa’s caucus voters were white evangelicals in 2004, it seems strange that 40% of caucus voters (61% of Republicans) in 2000 thought that a candidate’s relationship to Jesus Christ should play a part in the campaign for the presidential nomination.

Pew Forum, Religion and Politics 2008: Iowa

Iowa voters care deeply about presidential candidates’ individual beliefs. For example, according to a 2000 Los Angeles Times survey (registration required to view webpage), 40% of all Iowa caucus voters thought that a candidate’s relationship with Jesus Christ should play a part in the campaign. For Republican voters, that number jumped to 61%.

The influence of religion on Iowa’s caucuses and elections has grown since the early 1980s. A book co-edited by Pew Forum Senior Fellow John Green notes that in 2000, 40% of GOP caucus participants were evangelical Protestants, the highest percentage ever recorded. In an April 2007 Religion News Service story, one state GOP spokesman estimated that evangelicals and social conservatives account for 50-60% of all Iowa voters.

For Iowa Republicans, particularly evangelical Protestants, religion is a key political factor. In presidential elections since 1984, “the single best predictor of Republican voting is the evangelical population in the county,” according to Green’s book.

In the 1988 caucuses, evangelical religious broadcaster Pat Robertson won a quarter of the Iowa vote, placing him above eventual Republican nominee George H.W. Bush. Robertson’s strong showing surprised political observers. His backing came primarily from conservative Christians, whose concern about moral issues motivated their politics.

Laurie Goldstein, Huckabee Is Not Alone in Ignorance on Mormonism, New York Times, December 14, 2007

Mike Huckabee insists he spoke out of ignorance, not malice against the faith of a Republican rival, Mitt Romney, when he asked, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Although there may have been a kernel of truth in his question, Mr. Huckabee’s confessed ignorance about Mormonism is widely shared.Americans are notoriously uninformed about faiths other than their own, and they are particularly perplexed about Mormon beliefs. Mormons make up 2 percent of the American population, and their faith, which emerged 177 years ago in upstate New York, is a relative newcomer.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon church is called, shares many beliefs with traditional Christianity. But it departs substantially on key doctrines, a fact that has often made it a target of hostility. Mr. Huckabee’s remark, and Mr. Romney’s major speech on faith last week, is dragging those contrasts into the open.

The question posed by Mr. Huckabee in an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times Magazine and available at nytimes.com/politics is one of the standard sensationalistic A-bombs often hurled at Mormons by their detractors, said Scott A. Gordon, president of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, a group based in Redding, Calif., that defends Mormon theology.

“It’s an attack question,” Mr. Gordon said, “because it starts with a kernel of truth and shapes it into something that most Mormons wouldn’t recognize about their faith.”

Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and a Southern Baptist minister, quickly apologized to Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, for the question.

In Mormon theology, God is literally the father of all beings, and all beings once existed in a “premortal” state as “spirit beings,” said Robert L. Millet a professor of religion at Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution in Provo, Utah. Jesus was God’s first-born son, and everyone who came after that, including Satan could be considered the siblings of Jesus, he said.

“Latter-day Saints believe that all of us, Christ included, existed in a premortal existence, as spirits,” Mr. Millet said. “Yes, Jesus and Lucifer were in that premortal existence, together. But what we need to make very clear is that Jesus was God and there was never a time when Jesus and Lucifer were on the same plane.”

Don Imus: “Why don’t you like Huckabee? Because you’re gay, or what?”Media Matters, December 12, 2007

On the December 12 edition of ABC Radio Networks’ Imus in the Morning, while discussing Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee with nationally syndicated radio host Jay Severin, host Don Imus asked, “Why don’t you like Huckabee? Because you’re gay, or what?” Following Imus’ comment, co-host Charles McCord exclaimed, “Oh, come on, what the hell was that?”

Huckabee winning support by highlighting Romney’s Mormonism, Salt Lake Tribune, December 12, 2007

WASHINGTON - Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee appears to be using Mitt Romneys Mormon faith as a wedge issue to attract evangelical voters in the early states, political scientists say, a move that in part seems to be helping Huckabee stay ahead in Iowa polls.

Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, aired a TV commercial in Iowa recently telling voters he is a “Christian leader,” a move that could be seen as a veiled hit on Romney, whose faith is viewed as heretical by some Protestant evangelicals. And Huckabee has so far refused to say whether he believes the LDS Church is a cult, as his Southern Baptist religion labels the church.

In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Huckabee goes even further when asked if he believes Mormons are cultists. While first saying he didn’t know much about Mormonism, Huckabee then asks the reporter in an “innocent voice”: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Some political observers say Huckabee, now the leading GOP candidate in Iowa polls, is raising the issues of Romneys faith as a campaign tactic.

I think he knows its clearly an issue with his base,” says Kelly Patterson, director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at the LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University. “Hes sending signals through his advertisements and his comments that his base will understand.

Cult/Sect Overview - Apologetics

1. Cults and sects usually claim to be biblically-based, Christian organizations. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) maintains that it is a Christian church centered on Christ and His teachings. The Christian Science church also often refers to itself as a Christian movement.

Huckabee’s NRA Speech, September 28, 2007

And somehow, by the grace of God, when I squeezed the trigger, my Weatherby .300 Mag, which has got to be the greatest gun, I think, ever made in the form of a rifle — for my sake in hunting, I’ve never squeezed the trigger and not gotten something — did its work, and somehow the angels took that bullet and went right to the antelope, and my hunt was over in a wonderful way.

YouTube - Huckabee: Divine Providence Helps My Poll Numbers, December 4, 2007

STUDENT at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University: Recent polls show you surging… What do you attribute this surge to?

HUCKABEE: There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Students applaud–rapturously.) That’s the only way that our campaign can be doing what it’s doing. And I’m not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out. And it’s probably just as well. That’s honestly why it’s happening. (More rapturous applause.)

Among voters in general:

Munson: While it is striking that the Pew poll found that 25% of the general electorate would be less likely to vote for a Mormon candidate, it is even more striking that 61% would be less likely to vote for a candidate who did not believe in God.

Pew Forum: How the Public Perceives Romney, Mormons, December 4, 2007

Candidate Recently Discussed the Role of Religion in Public Life

Scott Keeter, Director of Survey Research, Pew Research Center
Gregory Smith, Research Fellow, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
December 4, 2007

Overall, one-in-four respondents to a recent nationwide Pew survey said that they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon candidate for president, and those who take this point of view express substantially more negative views of Romney, compared with those who express no such reservations about voting for a Mormon….

Though Mormonism is viewed as far less of a liability for a presidential candidate than not believing in God or being a Muslim, more people do express reservations about voting for a Mormon (25%) than about supporting a candidate who is an evangelical Christian (16%), a Jew (11%) or a Catholic (7%).Furthermore, the group of Americans most likely to say they value religiosity in a president - white evangelical Protestants - is also the group most apt to be bothered by his religion. More than one-in-three evangelical Republicans (36%) expressed reservations about voting for a Mormon, a level of opposition much higher than that seen among the electorate overall.

Munson: The fact that a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is often asked what he believes about Jesus is scandalous, as is the fact that he feels compelled to say that he believes that “Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of Mankind.” Let us hope the day will come when presidential candidates of both parties will feel free to say “I don’t believe Jesus is the son of God, moreover I don’t believe candidates for public office should be asked about such matters.”

Romney’s ‘Faith in America’ Address - New York Times, December 6, 2007

“There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.