ActiveFaith.us
 
 
Well, the “race” for U.S. president has officially started, with the Iowa caucuses taking place yesterday. I say “race” because that’s what it’s become in the eyes of the mainstream media (and, therefore, in the eyes of most Americans): a horse race, with regular updates on “who’s out front” and “who’s coming up fast” and “who’s dropping out,” etc.
 
I’ve also heard this election described as the “American Idol” of politics: just phone in your vote now for your favorite candidate!
 
Following the big win in Iowa of former Baptist minister and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee - thanks largely in part to an organized effort by grassroots evangelical Christians - I received a press release from my old boss (and conservative icon), Richard Viguerie, entitled “Huckabee Win is Bad News for the GOP” (click here to read the whole thing). Here’s the most interesting part to me:
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  2. “Mike Huckabee is a Christian socialist. He is a good man, but with a Big Government heart. He is the most liberal of all the Republican presidential candidates on economic issues... Huckabee’s approach to every problem or perceived problem is to pass a law and launch another government program. If you like President George W. Bush, you’ll love Mike Huckabee.”
 
Well, golly, Richard, tell us how you really feel! He goes on to talk about how conservatives are only able to win elections if there are “three legs to their stool” -- economic responsibility, a strong national defense, and social issues. Huckabee would “saw off the economic leg,” which will cause economic and traditional conservatives to “stay home in droves” on election day. (This came after Rush Limbaugh called Fox News Thursday night, saying Huckabee doesn't have "Reagan credentials" and that very few of the Republican candidates do.)
 
Years ago, I remember Gary North, in his “Biblical Blueprints” book Liberating Planet Earth, calling Huckabee’s brand of economics “baptized socialism” (though it wasn’t dealing with Huckabee directly, since it was published in 1991). Elsewhere, he briefly explained what he meant by that term:
 
  1. “Christianity is innately decentralist. From the beginning, orthodox Christians have denied the divinity of the State. This is why the Caesars of Rome had them persecuted and executed. They denied the operating presupposition of the ancient world, namely, the legitimacy of a divine rule or a divine State.
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  3. It is true that modern liberalism has eroded Christian orthodoxy. There are literally thousands of supposedly evangelical pastors who have been compromised by the liberalism of the universities and seminaries they attended. The popularity in the 1970's and early 1980's of Prof. Ronald Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, copublished by InterVarsity Press (evangelical Protestant) and the Paulist Press (liberal Roman Catholic), is indicative of the crisis. It sold like hotcakes, and it called for mandatory wealth redistribution by the State on a massive scale. Yet he is a professor at a Baptist seminary...
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  5. ...we countered the book by Sider when we published David Chilton's Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (fifth printing, 1990). Chilton's book shows that the Bible is the foundation of our economic freedom, and that the call for compulsory wealth transfers and higher taxes on the rich is simply baptized socialism. Socialism is anti-Christian to the core.”
 
Truly, Chilton’s book is one of the best books on economics ever written, especially from a biblical perspective (Henry Hazlett’s Economics in One Lesson is the best introductory book on the topic). Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to engage in “name-calling” in order to score political points. Huckabee’s a nice guy, and praise God, he’s born again.
 
But he doesn’t understand economics. If you understand the biblical nature of the free market system, you can see what Viguerie is talking about: Huckabee’s “baptized socialism” really does make him a “Christian Socialist.”
 
William Greene is the author of Christian Political Activism: Biblical Principles for Active Faith, a “work in progress.” Read the latest chapters at ActiveFaith.us.
“But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also; Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.” (Acts 17:5-8)
Friday, January 4, 2008
Mike Huckabee: “Christian Socialist?”