Huckabee says life, marriage should guide vote

Photo by Joni B. Hannigan

Gov. Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for president, preached Sunday night, Nov. 2 at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla.

JACKSONVILLE (FBW) – Respect for the every human life is the “single most important issue” Americans should consider before heading to the polls Nov. 4 Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a one-time Baptist pastor, told those gathered for Sunday evening worship Nov. 2 at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville.

Huckabee, who made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for president, was in Jacksonville just hours before Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, was due to arrive for a Monday rally on the eve of the presidential election. Huckabee withdrew from the race in early March after earning victories in eight primaries and caucuses.

Photo by Joni B. Hannigan

Gov. Mike Huckabee (right), former governor of Arkansas and an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for president, preached Sunday night, Nov. 2 at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla. Mac Brunson, pastor at First Baptist in Jacksonville invited Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor from Arkansas, whom he has known since his previous pastorate at First Baptist Church in Dallas.

Filling the pulpit of the more than 20,000-member Southern Baptist church, Huckabee was a guest of pastor Mac Brunson, a friend since Brunson’s previous pastorate at First Baptist Church in Dallas.

“The issue of life ought to be for Christian believers – it ought to be for every American as far as I’m concerned – a point on which we cannot and will not compromise,” Huckabee said.

No compromise on the issue of marriage means a “Yes” vote on Amendment 2, he said, urging support of the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment.

Reminding listeners that even in “decadent” cultures, marriage was not redefined as being anything other than one man and one woman relationship, Huckabee said, it has been a tradition long adhered to, if not in practice, in principle.

“I believe the single most important issue before us as a country is whether or not we respect the sanctity of every human life,” Huckabee said. “[B]ecause once we are wrong on that issue, then we begin to unravel at every other issue.”

Citing a military truism that stresses “we leave no man behind on the battlefield,” Huckabee said it’s that same mindset that he believes is “so much a doctrine of our country.”

“If every person has intrinsic worth and value then our respect for life matters a great deal,” Huckabee continued. “It says more about our culture and country than anything could.”

That patriotic duty is also expressed in biblical values. Proverbs 22:28 warns against moving the “boundary stones” that are set, Huckabee said.

Using an illustration to point out how easy it is to get lost when driving in an area that is unfamiliar because the neighborhood had changed, Huckabee said in the same way our nation has moved the boundary points and lost the notion “that some things are always right and some things are always wrong.”

“In our culture and country today, we have lost our way,” Huckabee said. “We are lost.”

The result is “chaos,” he said.

“So today we argue whether life is really a life at conception,” Huckabee said, talking about the chromosomal evidence that proves a mother’s body and that of her growing baby are indeed different. “It is not an extension of the mother’s body. It is a unique living soul,” he said of an unborn baby.

“So let me give the left an irrefutable, scientific fact,” Huckabee said to loud applause, “biologically, scientifically, forget the theology, life begins at conception according to anybody’s science understanding.”

For Christian believers, for every American even, the sanctity of human life should be a point where compromise is not an option, he said.

“If we disregard other human lives, other human lives might disregard us,” Huckabee said, in joking about his age, but then sobering up to talk about the importance of preserving the sanctity of all human life.

Huckabee said if a generation of individuals grows up believing some lives are “expendable” because they represent an “economic interruption or interference” – and it’s OK to terminate those human beings -- they are likely to look at the older generation with little regard for their wellbeing.

“We have given them the rights to terminate our lives for their economic well-being and for their own social well-being,” Huckabee warned, “because I being elderly and infirm represents something that we once said that when their generation was in the womb represented to us.”

Huckabee said there is also a direct correlation between the country’s financial woes and its citizenry. He said there is a “personal breakdown of character” that could be solved by a simplistic system of governance.

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” Huckabee said of the “one law” which would wipe out armed burglary, murder and mayhem. “Let us not forget the meltdown on Wall Street is not the result of an economic problem, it is the result of a moral problem.”

When a country loses its boundary stones, it loses its way, Huckabee said. “We’ve lost our way and there is a way back. It starts with us.

“I will self govern,” Huckabee said are the words to put action to thought. “I will govern accordingly for what’s right and wrong.  I will do what is right …. I will not do simply what I can get away with.”

Gambling and wagering also have become part of the culture, Huckabee said, and Americans shouldn’t wonder that some people prefer gambling to work.

“Why are we so surprised that even our financial institutions have become a gambling arena when we have proliferated gambling from one end of this county to the other with lotteries, casinos and every form imaginable,” Huckabee said. “[A]nd we act surprised when we have a culture that is built on gambling and wagering, rather than work."

Telling a story about taking his daughter to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a Holocaust Museum dedicated to Jewish children, Huckabee said he was concerned about how the 11-year-old would respond to such massive horror and pain.

After learning about how children as young as 5-6 were forced to wear a yellow star of David on their clothing and some were shot to death as sport she took it all in stride, even viewing graphic photos of bodies being bulldozed into graves at Auschwitz and Dachau.

Signing the exit guest book, however, Huckabee said he knew “she got it,” and to this day “she gets it.”

In the book’s comment section she had written simply, “Why didn’t somebody do something?”

“I ask you to be a somebody,” Huckabee said. “Will you commit to doing something?”

Florida Sen. Daniel Webster, a member of First Baptist Church of Central Florida in Orlando, attended the service at First Baptist in Jacksonville and said he believes Huckabee drove home the importance of Amendment 2.

“National elections, state elections, are all important,” Webster said, “but for a Christian, Amendment 2 is foundational. I think it’s gonna pass.”

Huckabee is on a book tour, promoting his eighth book Do the Right Thing, set for release Nov. 18.