Reading Hugh Hewitt’s interview of Mike Huckabee and the commentary at the Article VI Blog, I think I am willing to accept Mike Huckabee for who he truly is.
And that means I’ll never vote for him.
Mike Huckabee represents a lot of what is wrong with Christians in general. He does a tremendous job at being a likable bad Christian, but the sliminess of his responses still shows to those who care about that sort of thing.
Mike’s tepid defense of the LDS faith coming under attack for standing firm in positions he himself supports is interesting as well. Mike is no ally of any mormon. Sure, we may try to reach out to him and be nice to him and say kind things about him behind his back, and he may reciprocate with the occasional nice things to say about how mormons take care of “each other”, but I believe the vast majority of us won’t be surprised when he stabs us in the back yet again. But that’s what being Christian means—doing good to those that hate you and despitefully use you.
I certainly hope Mike is on his last legs as a national political figure. I pray that some other Christian, someone a lot less slimy than Mike, can step forward and take his mantle as the representative of the political protestants, but I am not expecting anyone to do so soon. Maybe someone like James Dobson can piece together the movement, but I don’t think it is likely. With virulent anti-mormons a key constituency of the baptist religion, it is likely never to happen.
Sure, maybe things will get really bad, as they were in California, where baptists and mormons have no choice but to put their best foot forward together and leave all the disagreements behind them, but when that time comes, I don’t see Mike being the one to be reaching out from the baptist side.
Which is a shame. Put aside all the religious differences, and there should be no closer politcal ally than mormons and protestants. We agree on everything, everything, and mormons are willing to throw vast sums of money and unheard of volunteer hours just to defend a single word in the English language.
We can, I believe, come to an understanding. The understanding would look something like this. We agree that we each have perverted Christianity and misread the Bible and publicly tell each other this without animosity. The LDS faith has followed a false prophet, according to the Protestants. And the Protestants have followed man and not Christ, according to the LDS.
While we disagree on religion, we agree on several things.
One, we agree on the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is between one man and one woman. (And despite popular perceptions and our history, we of the LDS faith do not believe in plural marriage as an approved practice today.)
Two, we agree that morality should dictate all the laws of the land. That means our country’s laws should reflect God’s laws as we see in the Bible. Sure, we are not going to be stoning our firstborns who refuse to accept the Lord, but we should have laws against murder, thievery, lying, etc… simply because those violate God’s commandments. How far we go in adhering to the law of God found in the Bible is the only discussion we should be having, not whether or not our laws should be based on eternal principles of an everloving God or the whims of man.
Three, we agree that we need wise and moral Christian leaders, or at least leaders who adhere to Christian principles for religious reasons, believing that they have a higher authority to answer to than the people, and that their sacred vows are sacred. We don’t need people who vainly profess to believe in Christ and behave in opposition to the basic principles of Christianity any more than we need people who publicly denounce Christ and religion and behave in accordance to their beliefs.
Four, we agree that our rights come not from logic or reason, nor from tradition and history, but from God. And as such, our rights are truly inalienable, meaning we cannot surrender them even if we wanted to. And as such, government is a creation of man and God designed to protect and not infringe upon those sacred rights. These rights don’t include the right to abuse one’s body or behave criminally, but they do include the rights to protect one’s self, family, and property, as well as speak freely.
If Mike Huckabee were truly willing to build a winning coalition, he would invite everyone of every faith, even Satan Worshippers, as long as they agreed to the political goals. He would state publicly, “I do not believe in the LDS faith, I do not accept them as a religion. Frankly, I believe that their religion is wrong and I don’t understand why people join that church. However, that church and its members agree with me politically, and as such, they are my friends, my allies, and my closest associates in this great political battle we find ourselves in. I will not do anything to hurt the political reputation of any member of the LDS church who is on my side of the issues, but instead, I will do what I can to help them politically.”
Anything less than this shows that Mike is unwilling to work to build a winning coalition.
