By Bob Allen
Missouri Baptist leaders were on board Sept. 25 when embattled U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin embarked on a four-day bus tour launched on the day of his deadline to withdraw from the Nov. 6 election over controversial comments he made about rape and abortion.
Don Hinkle, editor of The Pathway and director of public policy for the Missouri Baptist Convention, joins Akin supporters, including Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum and Bott Radio Network founder Dick Bott, in a series of campaign stops starting Sept. 25 in St. Louis and terminating in Kansas City Sept. 28, according to the Akin for Senate website.
Also participating in the “Missouri Common Sense Bus Tour” is David Baker, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Belton, Mo. Baker, also superintendent of Heartland Christian Schools, is expected to be nominated as president of the Missouri Baptist Convention Oct. 29-31 in St. Louis.
Baker and Hinkle are among more than 120 pastors and Christian leaders who have endorsed Akin amid pressure from GOP leaders for him to drop out of the race against a Democratic incumbent who fear his comment about pregnancy rarely resulting from “legitimate” rape paints the party ticket as too extreme.
Akin says he has no plans of backing down, and his strongest support is coming from religious conservatives, who regard him a standard bearer since his election to Congress in 2000.
Endorsements on the campaign website include Focus on the Family founder James Dobson; Paul Pressler, a retired Texas judge credited as chief architect of the “conservative resurgence” in the Southern Baptist Convention; and Larry Lewis, a past president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board.
Others standing by Akin include conservative commentator and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a former pastor who once served as president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention. Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stumped for Akin Sept. 24 at a $500-a-plate fundraiser in Kirkwood, Mo.
In August, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed an Internal Revenue Service complaint about the Missouri Baptist Convention’s involvement in the state’s Republican primary. AU asked the IRS to investigate whether Hinkle’s personal endorsement of Akin in a Baptist state newspaper editorial violated federal tax code that prohibits nonprofit charities like churches from taking sides in a political campaign.
Hinkle, 58, is the only person to serve as editor of the publication launched in 2002 after the state convention stripped the historic Baptist newspaper Word & Way of its official designation in a dispute over election of the newspaper’s board of trustees.
In a recent editorial Hinkle urged readers to support Pulpit Freedom Sunday Oct. 7, a campaign by the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as Alliance Defence Fund) challenging the ban on campaign participation by churches.
“The deterioration of American society has been underway for quite some time, and unfortunately too much of the Church has been persuaded that separation of church and state means Christians cannot discuss or participate in public policy matters,” Hinkle wrote. That “evil myth” he said, has been costly and the results devastating.
“Abortion was legalized in a 7-2 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 and the Church said or did nothing,” he wrote. “Since then, 40 million innocent lives have been killed. What did the Church do? Nothing, when there should have been riots in the street and God’s Word should have thundered from the pulpits.”
“The Supreme Court also ruled that public schools must no longer allow classes to pray to God,” he continued. “Nothing but silence from the Church. Look at our schools, infested with drugs, guns, teen-age pregnancies and a growing homosexual influence.”
Hinkle said no-fault divorce “has destroyed the American family,” resulting in single-parent homes and out-of-wedlock births. “The family unit has been so weakened that it has become vulnerable to the specter of homosexual ‘marriage’ and a redefining of ‘family’ in direct contradiction to what God ordained,” he wrote. “The reason a younger generation, ravaged by divorce, is indifferent to homosexual ‘marriage’ is because they had no example of what a solid marriage looks like.”