In 1998 Pastor Governor Huckabee attended a Salt Lake City Southern Baptist Convention to speak and promote his book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting our Culture of Violence. Coincidently, along with Huckabee’s book, an anti-mormon book titled “Mormonism Unmasked” was sold. This book teaches Bible-believing Christians how to witness to Mormons (read: convert) and it attacks Mormons by essentially arguing that “at their core the Mormon doctrine of God is polytheistic [and] the Jesus of the LDS is not the same Jesus as found in the New Testament”. Nice. So much for ecumenicism.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette covered Huckabee’s speech in which he exposes his Christianist motives. He said:
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.
So crime and poverty exists because people don’t have Jesus in their hearts? Because no Christian has ever committed a crime.
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.
The real answers for whom, Mike? So the answer to government’s failure is Jesus? No, sorry. I don’t know the answer, but I’m confident it is not Jesus. If Jesus shows up and lends a hand – that’s cool. But let’s try to come up with a rational, Earthly answer and not count on Jesus.
He finished the speech saying:
I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.
I stress the last part because “reclaiming America for Christ” is the catch slogan of the late Dominionist D. James Kennedy’s ministry. In 2006, Huckabee addressed D. James Kennedy’s aptly named “Reclaiming America for Christ” Conference.
To give an idea of what the conference is all about, Kennedy is quoted in 2005 conference literature as stating:
As the vice-regents of God, we are to bring His truth and His will to bear on every sphere of our world and our society. We are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government … our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors – in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.
Rolling Stone says further:
At Reclaiming America, most of the conference is taken up by grassroots training sessions that supply ministers, retirees and devout churchgoers with “The Facts of Stem-Cell Research” or “Practical Steps to Impact Your Community with America’s Historical Judeo-Christian Heritage.” “We’re going to turn you into an army of one,” Gary Cass…promises.
So the person who may win the Republican nomination wants to “reclaim America for Christ”. Scary. It might bare repeating this statement from the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen…
I don’t know where Mike et. al. got this idea to “reclaim” anything. When did this nation belong to Christ in the first place? And why does Huckabee think Jesus should get reclaiming privilege over Vishnu, Odin, Allah, or Quatzecoatl?
Some would call this Christian Supremacy.
