NEW YORK (ABP) — Negotiating the dicey waters of presidential diplomacy would be easier than resolving differences between various Baptist groups, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said in a recent campaign appearance.
This is the same Mike Huckabee who last May accepted — then rejected — an invitation to speak at a historic pan-Baptist gathering set to begin in late January.
“Being president — that'll be a heck of a lot easier job than getting all the Baptists to agree on everything,” Huckabee, a Baptist minister, said at a Dec. 6 political event in Greensboro, N.C., Hendersonville (N.C.) Times-News.
The former Arkansas governor said that while he's open to discussing the basic tenets of his faith, he won't voice his views on the highly public controversies in his own Southern Baptist Convention. Such a discussion is not relevant to the presidency, he said, adding that he doesn't believe there is an absolute Baptist theology.
Huckabee's decision not to deliver a keynote speech to next year's Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant came in reaction to critical comments that event organizer Jimmy Carter made about President Bush's foreign policy. Carter had said in a May 19 interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that “as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history.”
Democrats and former presidents Carter and Bill Clinton say the Baptist meeting — which includes two prominent Republican Baptist politicians — will not be politically oriented, even though it comes during the height of the presidential primary season.
At the time of his decision not to speak, Huckabee told reporters he had “tentatively” agreed to participate in the meeting with the understanding that it was “a celebration of faith and not a political convocation.” He withdrew so as not to appear to approve “what could be a political, rather than spiritual, agenda,” he said.
Organizers say the event will unite an expected 20,000 participants from all major Baptist groups in the United States around common commitments to evangelism and social ministry. The convocation will feature sessions inspired by Luke 4:18-19 and will address religious liberty, poverty, racism, AIDS, faith in public policy, stewardship of the earth, evangelism, financial stewardship, and prophetic preaching.
Confirmed speakers include Baptists as diverse as Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Vice President Al Gore; Republican senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and Charles Grassley of Iowa; journalist and author Bill Moyers; and author and sociologist Tony Campolo.
Huckabee's SBC was not invited to participate officially in the celebration, and the denomination's leaders have openly criticized the gathering for that and for allegedly being politically biased toward the left.
Organizers noted that the SBC had previously withdrawn from North American Baptist Fellowship, a pan-Baptist group that includes most of the other major Baptist denominations in the United States. It served as the framework for the event's participating bodies.
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