Gov. Huckabee: Politics Is Not The Answer posted by John Sorensen on Jul 10, 2013

Mike Huckabee is a really nice guy. A former Southern Baptist preacher, he is also the former two-term governor of Arkansas, a former presidential candidate, and now a nationally-known radio and TV personality. Still, there’s not a pretentious bone in his body. And he’s also quite funny as we discovered June 13 when the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion on Capitol Hill, honored him with its Distinguished Christian Statesman award.  Watch the video

Gov. Huckabee gave an entertaining acceptance speech that touched on the role Dr. Kennedy played in his own life and the crucial importance of the Center for Christian Statesmanship’s work on Capitol Hill.

He was a teenager attending a small Baptist church in Hope, Arkansas, when he first encountered Dr. Kennedy via the 1970 film, Like a Mighty Army. The movie showed God using Evangelism Explosion to grow Dr. Kennedy’s church in Fort Lauderdale and demonstrated, Huckabee said, that not all Presbyterians were the “frozen chosen.”

Huckabee later learned EE at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and went out weekly to share the Gospel on the streets of Fort Worth, Texas. “No one was more on fire in the country in leading people to Christ than Dr. Kennedy,” Huckabee told attendees at the Center for Christian Statesmanship’s 18^th annual Distinguished Christian Statesman award banquet. He added that the “innovation of Evangelism Explosion was and remains one of the most powerful tools to simply share the gospel that has ever been created.”

American culture is “slipping away from us,” Huckabee said, and the solution is not in Washington. “Politics is merely a vehicle to help influence the culture but it can’t change it. The change of a culture has to come as people have personal relationships with a Holy God through Christ.”

That’s why the Center’s evangelistic and discipleship outreach on Capitol Hill is so needed. “The Center recognizes that the ultimate way to change America is not simply to pass a new law … [but to] change people into the character of Christ.”  By bringing the Gospel to the people who write our nation’s laws, Huckabee said the Center “may be one of the most significant ways that America will be changed.”

I believe Gov. Huckabee is absolutely correct. Politics is important and Christians must bring biblical salt and light into the civic arena, but it is not the answer to our ills. That will only come when our leaders and those of us they serve bend the knee to the One who has all authority in Heaven and earth. And that’s what the Center is all about on Capitol Hill. Click here to learn more about the work of the Center, which just moved into its own building, a mere two blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.