By Bob Allen
Southern Baptist presidential candidate Ted Cruz says evangelical pastors are Republicans’ best hope to win the White House in 2016.
“Nothing is more important in the next 18 months than that the Body of Christ rise up and that Christians stand up,” the Republican senator from Texas said in an interview with American Family Radio Aug. 11 — “that pastors stand up and lead.”
Cruz, a member of First Baptist Church in Houston, said his father, Rafael Cruz, a 76-year-old pastor, is now traveling the country in a ministry primarily focused on other pastors.
“He’s got actually a very hard message that he delivers,” the younger Cruz said. “He will tell pastors: ‘Listen, God really laid upon my heart that no one bears greater responsibility for the condition of this country today than the pastors, because if the flock stumbles into a ditch, you don’t’ blame the sheep, you blame the shepherd.’”
The candidate said 54 million of the total 90 million evangelicals nationwide did not vote in the last election.
“Is it any wonder that we have the government that we have, the leaders we have, if believers stay home and leave electing our leaders to unbelievers?” he asked. “We get exactly what we deserve.”
He said change is possible “if we can simply swing Christians to the polls.”
“Nothing is more important than having people of faith stand up and just vote our values,” he said. “Vote biblical values. That’s how we turn the country around.”
Cruz, in the middle of a tour of Southern primary states, said if elected he would do five things on this first day in office. First, he would “rescind every single unconstitutional and illegal executive action taken by President Obama.” Then we would “direct the Department of Justice to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood and prosecute any and all criminal conduct.”
Next Cruz said he would “direct every agency of the federal government, the persecution of religious liberty ends today.”
“The federal government will defend religious liberty, not attack it,” he said. Cruz also pledged to “rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal and defend this nation against the threat of a radical Islamic ayatollah with a nuclear weapon.”
Finally, he said, “On the first day in office, I intend to begin the process of moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the once and eternal capital of Israel.”
Cruz, one of three Southern Baptists running for the GOP nomination, was not invited to a candidate forum at a Southern Baptist Convention missions conference Aug. 4 that included interviews with Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, because invitations were extended only to candidates of either party polling 10 percent or higher in the Real Clear Politics national average a month prior to the event. An NBC News poll immediately on the heels of the Fox News primetime presidential debate Aug. 7 showed Cruz moving into second place with 13 percent of Republican voters, 10 points behind frontrunner Donald Trump.
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