Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee believes that “character defines the world we live in, our government, welfare programs, schools and everything else in our lives.”
Mike HuckabeeAnd now he has written a book on it, entitled “Character Makes a Difference,” which is published by Broadman and Holman and will be available in LifeWay Christian stores in June.
Huckabee, a Southern Baptist who’s making a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, in an interview for an Inside LifeWay podcast, said, “A person’s core is what gives them the center for what they do or how they act.”
The 51-year-old Huckabee, a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Seminary, said that the responses of people to life’s crises are the “natural flow of who we are.”
“If we aren’t authentic,” said the former president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention, “that’s going to come out in a crisis. If we are authentic, then who we are deep within our soul is also going to come out. That’s why a person’s character is more important than a speech you make or a bill you sign.”
Huckabee, who also graduated from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., has been pastor of Arkansas Baptist churches in Pine Bluff and Texarkana.
“When I talk about the role of faith in my life,” he said in the LifeWay interview, “I think it is so very important that those of us who are going to seek public office are honest with the people about who we are and what makes us tick.”
Huckabee, who served for 10 years as governor of Arkansas, took issue in the interview with politicians who “run from” their faith when asked about it. “Frankly,” he said, “I had rather have someone who says, ‘I’m a rank unbeliever,’ or ‘I’m a nominal believer,’ than someone who tries to tell me, ‘I’m a person of deep personal faith, but I don’t let it affect my political life at all.'”
He pointed out that people ought to be “very comforted” by politicians who are honest about their faith.
Huckabee made it clear, however, that a Christian politician shouldn’t try to impose his or her faith on other people, or, as he described it in the LifeWay interview, as trying to “replace the Capitol dome with a steeple.”
“The greatest thing about faith,” he said, “is that if it is not free to be rejected, it is not free to be accepted. The best way I can encourage people to accept my faith is not to impose it on them, but to make my faith a contagious faith that they want to embrace because they see something in my life they find worth emulating.”
The podcast is available at www.lifeway.com/insidelifeway.