LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) — Mike Huckabee, a former and potential Republican presidential candidate, staked out conservative political ground in a speech to Southern Baptist pastors.
While only obliquely referring to President Obama, the former Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor took veiled swipes at his policies on the Middle East, abortion rights and gay rights during the speech. It was delivered at the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference, held immediately prior to the SBC annual meeting in Louisville, Ky.
Mike Huckabee spoke to the Southern Baptist Pastors Conference in Louisville, Ky. (BP Photo)
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Current policy makes it seem like it’s more important for the United States to “have a tea party” with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than to stand with Israel, Huckabee asserted.
“What we are seeing going on in the streets of Tehran is painful,” he said, referring to massive protests against Ahmedinejad’s disputed re-election that have been forcibly and violently repressed.
Huckabee called it frightening to see video of protesters in Iran risking their lives, but also found it encouraging “because they know within their own human hearts that something isn’t right about their inability to be free — free in their hearts, free in their spirits, free in their families.”
“God is hearing their voices,” Huckabee said, “and God help us if we do not hear their voices and stand with the people.”
Huckabee, a former president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, now is a host and political commentator on Fox News Channel and ABC Radio and widely is expected to run again for president in 2012.
He told pastors he did not intend for his sermon to be political, but a lack of moral responsibility is at the heart of many of America’s social ills.
“I would suggest to you that the blood of 50 million unborn babies cries out since 1973, because we have decided that the convenience and satisfaction of the biological mother is more valuable than the intrinsic worth and value of each innocent human life,” Huckabee said.
“If we do not speak up and speak out for the preservation and the protection of every human life, then God help us, because I cannot imagine that God would somehow bless a nation that would do to 50 million unborn children what he brought judgment against the Babylonians for doing by the handful on the altars of Babylon centuries ago.”
Huckabee also marveled that people would read in the Bible that God created humans as male and female and then get “confused” about the meaning of marriage.
“People have a right to live any way they want to,” he said. “But nobody has a right to change the basic definition of marriage — because to do so is not simply changing a social institution; it is changing an eternal picture of Christ and his church.”
A lot of the economy’s problems come from “a culture of corruption” that produces characters like convicted swindler Bernard Madoff, he asserted.
“Wall Street did not melt down because it was a money problem,” Huckabee said. “It melted down because there was a moral problem.”