by Scott Lamb
Huckabee did consider going straight into politics. Part of his motivation for moving from Texas to Arkansas was a possible attempt at the Fourth District House of Representatives seat in the 1980 election.6 Such a campaign, however, could not have had much chance of success. The Fourth District had never once elected a Republican since its creation in 1875, and was unlikely to do so for a rookie who would only become age-eligible a few months before the general election (the U.S. Constitution mandates a congressman be at least twenty-five). Would the GOP have even allowed an underage candidate into the primary?
That said, the current congressman, Beryl Anthony Jr., was finishing up his first term of office, so the power of the incumbency would not yet have been indomitable. Anthony hailed from El Dorado but also had a connection to Hope, Arkansas, because he’d married the sister of future hometown celebrity Vince Foster, deputy counsel to the Clinton White House.
And this is where the Huckabee history gets interesting. Before Anthony, the Fourth District was represented by Ray Thornton, a congressman so popular he easily could have won reelection. But being so popular, he decided he would run for U.S. Senate, attempting to fill the empty seat of former senator John McClellan, who died in office in 1977. Arkansas officials decided that until the special election to replace McClellan was held in November 1978, a “caretaker” would be appointed to immediately fill his seat, but that person would be ineligible to run for the office. So McClellan’s seat would be open for the first time since 1944. Three major Democrats jumped into the race for their party’s nomination and nearly split evenly their party’s vote: David Pryor (34 percent) defeated Jim Guy Tucker (32 percent) and Thornton (31 perent). Tucker, having lost in the primary, was available when Jimmy Carter called and asked him to head up the ill-fated conference on the family. But had he become a U.S. senator that year, he would not have become the governor who, because of scandal, resigned his office to then lieutenant governor Huckabee.
As for Thornton, he had given up his congressional seat to run for Senate, so his loss in the Senate primary meant that he and his staff now needed to find new jobs. One such staff member was his young press secretary in Washington, DC, Jim Harris, who was married to Huckabee’s older sister, Pat. The couple had met in 1975 when Jim worked for the Hope Star and Pat did her student teaching. Upon Thornton’s loss, they left DC for Arkansas, settling in the border town of Texarkana, where Jim took a position as the editor of the local paper. Being on the border of both Texas and Arkansas, he had to cover the politics of two different states. As a result, both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton know Harris by name, literally. “If Mike were to become president one day, that would make three,” Harris said. “Not bad for a small-town newspaper editor.”7 Eight years later, the Harris family welcomed the Huckabees to Texarkana, and they all attended the church where Huckabee pastored. Then, when Huckabee became governor, Jim worked on the communications and media team for nearly the entire length of the administration.
All that to say, Huckabee came back home from Texas in 1979 to run against freshman congressman Beryl Anthony—who had just defeated his brother-in-law’s boss. But upon further consideration of the situation, he chose not to run. Some people run for office with little or no chance of winning, simply to secure name recognition for a future election cycle. But Huckabee said he’s never done this; he always entered into a race believing he could win. So his sitting out in 1980 seems mostly a decision that the time was not right. It would be best to save his firewood for another cycle—perhaps 1982?
But there would be no 1982 Huckabee campaign. Midterm elections never go well for the party of the president, so 1982 did not calculate to be a good time to unseat a now two-term Democratic congressman, in a district that had never elected a Republican. Once again, the district looked unwinnable. And since the Huckabees had brought their second son, David, into the world in 1980, the increasing financial responsibilities of fatherhood demanded prudence. Then, in 1982 the Huckabees received some “sugar and spice” into their family with the birth of their daughter, Sarah. The Huckabees adored their children and sought to make wise choices in order to be able to provide for them. As one author later noted, “from 1973 to 1982, the United States suffered through three recessions, two energy crises, inflation and high unemployment—a disillusioning time to establish a career.”8 Yes, and a terrible time to launch a political campaign.
But on a positive note, by 1982 Huckabee was already experiencing the joys of successful pastoral ministry in Pine Bluff. His ministry was off to a great start, and the people were in support of his innovations. Huckabee believes in the idea of staying where God has put you and working in the areas where God is revealing signs of His blessing. In contrast to the appearance of a closed door for a congressional career, the door of Huckabee’s pastoral ministry seemed wide-open.
If Huckabee was ever to leave his fledgling pastorate to enter politics, 1984 appeared to be the year. Reagan’s “Morning in America” ads conveyed an optimistic message that the nation had turned a corner and was poised for a rekindling of traditional values.9 Reagan returned to Reunion Arena in 1984 to speak at a prayer breakfast. He talked about the relationship between religion and politics: “The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.”10 In other words, Reagan delivered a speech with one of Huckabee’s favorite messages, that we shouldn’t force a separation between politics and religion. But Huckabee wasn’t even present at that meeting with Reagan in 1984. Only five years after serving as a midwife at the birth of the Moral Majority and only four years after considering a run for Congress, Huckabee now found himself busy enough with all the successful duties of being a pastor and father.
Huckabee got himself into that pastorate in Pine Bluff through the back door.11 Immanuel asked Huckabee to do “pulpit supply” for them and to preach at their upcoming revival. Pleased with his preaching, they asked him to serve as their interim pastor while they searched for their next minister. The remainder of the story is self-explanatory. After hearing him preach week after week, Immanuel offered him the full-time position. With a future in politics now looking doubtful, he took stock of the situation in Pine Bluff and committed himself to the church.12
Within a few months of his tenure at Immanuel, Huckabee began leading the church to become an affiliate station of ACTS, a satellite television network then owned by the Southern Baptist Convention. As an affiliate, they would broadcast both network programming and local programming. All of the shows were either religious, family-friendly, or focused on community events.
This was new ground for churches in Pine Bluff, and it did not come without resistance. As a 1990 denominational press profile of Huckabee explained:
From that moment he felt that this was what he had been searching for all of his life. Southern Baptists had not had anything which tied the local church and community together in this unique way. When Huckabee first mentioned the possibility of a television ministry for Immanuel, many in the community laughed. But in February of 1981, the church began working toward developing this ministry. Huckabee said, “The Lord overcame all the problems and the ministry became a reality.”13
Realizing that Sunday nights were a dead space of activity in people’s lives, and a bit depressing, too, as the new workweek approached, Huckabee created and hosted a show called Positive Alternatives, which focused on uplifting stories and people from right there in Pine Bluff. Such broadcasts made him a pastor “for all of Pine Bluff,” said Garey Scott, Immanuel’s youth minister at the time.14
For Huckabee, television was only a means to the end goal of impacting the comm
unity outside the walls of the church. Broadcasting tied the church to the community and led to more people coming to church—his own, and the other churches too. Huckabee did not care to build a personal kingdom. The stronger all the churches in Pine Bluff became, the better the entire community would be. He believed mass communications could break down walls of separation that kept the churches from uniting together for greater effectiveness.
Two other side effects of the broadcasting ministry also emerged. First, Huckabee began to receive and accept an endless stream of speaking requests, both locally and throughout the state. Bruce Rodntick, a staff member at Immanuel, remembers Huckabee speaking more than twenty times a month.15 For Huckabee, this was the start of what has now become nearly four decades of speaking several hundred times per year.
A second effect of the broadcasting was that Huckabee had to confront racism within the church. If you are going to broadcast community programs promoting gospel unity, then you can’t turn right around and close the door of membership to African-Americans. However, Immanuel had never before had a black member, and when a young man expressed a desire to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized into the church, the issue became real. A number of members explained how that just wasn’t done at their church, and that the man needed to go to church with his own people. Huckabee recalled what happened next: “I actually stood before them on a Sunday morning and said ‘If the young black man who came isn’t welcome, then neither am I. This is the Lord’s house, not ours. He is welcome to come and if that’s a problem, then you are welcome to go.’ About seven old men got up and walked out. They later threatened the church and me. But we baptized him—that’s for sure!”16 This courage to stand against racism at the threat of physical harm and loss of livelihood came when Huckabee was hardly thirty, and had three young mouths to feed at home.
Huckabee also broke down racial divides among Pine Bluff ministers. Wherever need arose, he was simply color-blind. Dwight McKissic, an influential African-American Southern Baptist pastor now in Texas, also served in Pine Bluff during this time period. “I remember visiting with Mike about some pastoral issues in my career. Not only did he take the time; he also provided me some encouragement and counsel I needed, and some favors I needed.”17
During his college days at OBU, Randy Sims’s parents would ask him where he was going to church. Since he often went where Huckabee was preaching, he’d tell his parents he was attending a Missionary Baptist church. His father, at the time a music minister at Immanuel Baptist in Pine Bluff—the very church Huckabee would later pastor—would respond, “A Missionary Baptist church!?” Years later, after Sims’s father had moved to a different city, he would tell Randy about all the good things he was hearing from Pine Bluff. He told Randy, “They’ve got this new young guy who is so good and the church is doing great.” Randy said, “Yeah, Dad, I know. That’s my friend Mike Huckabee. The same guy you complained about when I went to hear him at his Missionary Baptist church.”18
One key to his successful leadership was to create a culture of optimism using his favorite verse, Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (NKJV). Huckabee knew that sometimes God allows trials and defeats as a means to refine Christians. That said, he also believed God can take an almost-dead church and turn it around for another season of faithfulness and fruitfulness. When the people of Immanuel called Huckabee, they did not believe their church would be around in another five years. In fact, that may have been why they were willing to call such a young minister—what difference does it make if you’re desperate?19 The first thing he did was convince them that God was capable of doing anything, and there was no reason to assume their church had to die.
Even so, another leadership principle Huckabee brought to Pine Bluff was his idea of finding one’s unique place and purpose. As he had done years before at Boys State, Huckabee looked to separate the church from the pack by doing things that weren’t already being done by everyone else. The gospel is the same for everyone, but “if all a church is doing is duplicating what other churches are doing in programming, it is wasting its time and a lot of money. Every church needs to find its own unique ministry in the community.”20
After experiencing twenty years of decline, Immanuel grew each of the five-plus years Huckabee pastored the church.
CHAPTER 19
TEXARKANA
September 1986–1991
As the years passed, I became increasingly convinced that most people wanted me to captain the Love Boat, making sure everyone was having a good time.
—MIKE HUCKABEE
SOUTHERN BAPTIST CHURCHES ARE AUTONOMOUS UNITS. Though they associate together for common causes and missionary support, there is no ecclesial hierarchy over the local congregation. Nobody outside the congregation itself determines who the pastor will be. Therefore, when a Baptist church finds itself in need of a pastor, the normal protocol is to form a “pastor search committee,” to begin collecting résumés, and then to receive a recommendation from the committee that the members will vote on.
In the spring and summer of 1986, First Beech Street Church in Texarkana, Arkansas, contacted Huckabee to gauge his desire for becoming their next pastor. He was not interested. Things were going well at Pine Bluff, as the church was growing and joyful. Besides, Pine Bluff had done the one thing he really desired—the television broadcasting ministry. So he simply told Beech Street that he could not consider the offer unless the church would consider building a television ministry. The pulpit committee responded by saying that Huckabee’s Pine Bluff television ministry was the reason he had appeared on their screen, literally, and that they wanted him to replicate this ministry at their own church.1 So the Huckabees loaded up their belongings and their three children, and they moved 150 miles southwest to begin ministry in a new city.
To be sure, the two churches Huckabee pastored had their differences. Whereas Immanuel was on life support when he arrived, Beech Street already had health and vitality. Texarkana also had a bit more affluence and a white-collar professional core. Huckabee learned, however, that although greater education and salary can put lipstick on personal messes, underneath it all a pastor still deals with people in need—addictions, death, heartbreak, and pains that must be addressed. He shepherded through births, funerals, weddings, legal troubles, and gut-wrenching decisions about end-of-life care.2
Huckabee said pastoral ministry prepared him well for serving as governor because he had been a firsthand witness to the social and moral problems and pathologies present in every social stratum of life. He had seen the devastating effects of personal addiction and individual excess. Huckabee developed an eye for pragmatic solutions and a heart for the personal narratives of the pain. He dealt with people who, like the weary travelers from the Eagles hit “Hotel California,” had succumbed to the allure of what they thought was paradise, only to wake up and find themselves in a prison of their own addiction. Abstract social issues developed names and faces as he became invested in people’s lives.3
Huckabee’s pragmatic-realist vision of life became solidified during his pastoral ministry, because he saw it does nobody any good to talk about society’s problems in an overtly ideological manner that doesn’t actually impact anyone’s life. “During my teenage years and early adulthood, I longed for a faith that would catapult me above the pressures and problems of daily life,” he wrote. “Somehow it never worked. I now realize the sun shines on the just and unjust alike, and it also rains on the good as well as the bad.”4 A person’s life often capsizes—as when Janet got cancer as a newlywed—and real-life solutions are needed, not empty rhetoric. And people in pain need a human touch to help get them through.
All of this ties into the style and heartbeat of Huckabee’s pastoral ministry. He believed the doctrine and ethics of Christianity could become more palatable to a watching worl
d if a genuine attempt was made to be more winsome. The following quote sums up his philosophy of Christian leadership, whether in ministry, politics, or anywhere else:
We’ve not been very good at depicting the evangelical Christian faith. We’ve done a lousy job, sometimes focusing more on what we seem to be against than what we’re for. And I think that’s our fault. I think we’ve done a lousy job of communicating warmth and heart. We’ve come across many times as being harsh and intolerant. And for me, being a person of faith is an absolute admission of my own frailty and my complete understanding that the human condition is a very fragile one. And, if anything, it has made me far more sympathetic to people, whether they are addicted to drugs or addicted to alcohol or food for that matter. And I understand that we are all pilgrims struggling on this pathway.
Be careful about being overly harsh with someone who falls and stumbles, because, you know, I’m one step away from joining them down there on the turf. That doesn’t mean that I am just cavalier about what I think might be the right and wrong of certain lifestyles. But certainly it doesn’t mean that I should be overly judgmental and harsh and, frankly, mean-spirited. And I sometimes think we’ve all, in my realm, been guilty of that.5
Rick Caldwell also served as a pastor and thinks the key to his friend’s successful ministry went beyond his excellent communication abilities. “He was so good at communicating with the people but also very compassionate about being involved in their lives. And as a pastor, he didn’t settle for just pastoring his own flock. He was also concerned about connecting the church with the community. He would become a pastor to the community, and people of different faiths even embraced him—the non-evangelicals.”6