Huckabee at Falwell's Church: Ten Commandments better than law Michael Roston

Published: Monday February 11, 2008



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Print This Email This Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has won electoral contests by focusing his pitch to religious conservatives around the country. And in a Sunday visit to the church of the deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell, Huckabee threw that base some more red meat. "We really dont need a lot of law if were people of morality," Huckabee said at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, according to a report in the Lynchburg News Advance. "There are only 10 basic laws that we need the reason that the law is more complicated is because we try to find clever ways around those 10." Additional reports at CBS News showed Huckabee taking his statement a step farther. "I hope you know Jesus Christ personally because the level to which he rules you and governs you, you need less and less of mans law to tell you how to live and that is what our Founding Fathers understood and we must understand," he preached. Huckabee also railed against what he called the "degeneration of morality" in society before playing his bass guitar with the church's musicians. The Baptist minister and former governor isn't new to calling for more Biblical influence on America's system of government. On the stump in Michigan in January, Huckabee declared that there was a need, "to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." The late Falwell's Liberty University has long been an important battleground for Republican presidential hopefuls. Sen. John McCain earned the ire of social conservatives during his 2000 run for president when he described Falwell and other Christian conservative leaders as "agents of intolerance." But he reconciled with Falwell in 2006, reversing his position on the Baptist minister, and subsequently delivered a commencement address at Liberty. It was Huckabee, however, who reportedly got the late Rev. Falwell's endorsement. "My father supported Huckabee before he was number two in the polls," Jerry Falwell, Jr. announced in November, according to MSNBC. Still, the News Advance's Christa Desrets reported, Falwell Jr.'s brother Jonathan demurred from endorsing Huckabee. I would never endorse anybody from the pulpit, she quotes him saying, adding that he appeared undecided between McCain and Huckabee. Huckabee continues to trail McCain in Virginia polls, even after the withdrawal of Mitt Romney from the race. The commonwealth's voters will select their candidates for president on Tuesday.



