Theologians vs. Huckabee

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, whose political ads often tout him as a “Christian Leader,” now has some disturbing ideas about the Constitution that has pundits, politicos and people of faith buzzing. And Thomas Jefferson rolling in his grave.

While Huckabee is eager to challenge theocracy in Muslim countries, this narrow interpretation of faith’s role in public life here seriously threatens both religion and our pluralistic democracy. Religion flourishes in the U.S. specifically because it’s not entangled with the power of the state.

As Huckabee dropped his bombshell, more than two dozen Christian pastors, theologians and prominent scholars had some important words on how to keep religion from being perverted by the political process.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good teamed up with Faith in Public Life to release a statement, Keeping Faith: Principles to Protect Religion on the Campaign Trail. Religion has an essential role in promoting the common good, yet Catholic, evangelical and mainline Protestant leaders urged candidates to affirm that there is no religious test for office or a single faith that has exclusive claim to moral values.

“We are troubled to see candidates pressed to pronounce the nature of their religious beliefs, asked if they believe every word of the Bible, forced to fend off warnings by a few religious authorities about reception of sacraments, compelled to confront derogatory and false allegations of radical Muslim childhood education, and faced with prejudicial analysis of their denominational doctrines,” the leaders write. History is replete with examples of religion compromised by its collusion with power, and the role of religion in the current campaign raises concern that it is once again being misused.”

Read the full statement here.