by Scott Lamb
Huckabee’s presidency began in earnest, as he began crisscrossing the state in an attempt to bring unity. He declared his top goal to be “to reestablish trust, friendship and a sense of common purpose among Arkansas Baptists.”9
To people who wondered if their new president was sufficiently conservative in theology, Huckabee responded,
One legitimate concern expressed is that we remain faithful to God’s Word. You elected a conservative president last year. My belief in the inerrancy and infallibility of God’s Word didn’t start when it became politically expedient. No one in this state has successfully shown my views to be any less “conservative” than anyone theologically. I remain convinced that, in our state and in our institutions, we need not lose sleep over the confidence Arkansas Baptists have to the veracity of scripture.10
The more contentious issue related to Huckabee’s presidential appointments to committees. Following the playbook used on the national level, if Huckabee were a “true conservative,” then he would use his position as president to only appoint Arkansas Baptists who had been given clearance by the conservatives. To effect a conservative takeover of the convention, one group or the other would need to shut out the other side from participation in the governances of the entities. Huckabee countered this view.
It continues to be my conviction that if we are willing to accept the financial contributions of a church and seat its messengers at our convention, then we have a moral obligation to ensure that its members are not excluded from consideration and participation in the rest of our processes—including representation on denominational entities. If we really believe that a church or its pastor is not “orthodox” enough for us, then let’s have the integrity to challenge their seating as messengers and have the decency to return their gifts to the Cooperative Program. No one should be forced to pay if he isn’t going to ever get to “play.”11
Some people, even some from outside of Arkansas, never forgot Huckabee’s refusal to fall in line with the “conservative resurgence” plan for appointments. Hal Bass, now a professor of political science at Ouachita Baptist University, said Huckabee was the moderate’s candidate, “but I wouldn’t say he was considered a moderate. . . . Certainly, he wasn’t in the trenches fighting on behalf of the conservative resurgence. That wasn’t who he was. That wasn’t the fight he wanted to make.”12
Huckabee advocated the use of technology so that more congregations could come together at the annual meeting, via satellite. In another example of his blue-collar populism, he recognized that “conventions are often more representative of pastors with convention budgets than many rank-and-file Baptists, unable to take three days off in the middle of a week to attend. Imagine the possibilities when churches could send its full number of messengers without bankrupting the budget by having to pay expenses of distant travel!” His advocacy of technology here was for leveling the influence between rich and poor churches. Huckabee also played to his fellow Arkansans’ sensibilities in being cast as losers compared to other states. “We in Arkansas are often sneered at for being ‘last’ in per capita incomes, teacher salaries, and the like. If we can pull off this bold effort, the Christian world will certainly not say of Arkansas Baptists that we are last!”13 In the end, things did not work out to make it a reality, but the plan was visionary for its time. Later when he became the governor of Arkansas, he would use the same approach—implementing new technological advances to create greater efficiency and less frustration for constituents.
Huckabee presided over the next year’s annual meeting, this time held at Immanuel Baptist in Little Rock, pastored by Rex Horne, now the president of Ouachita Baptist University. Immanuel served as the home church for the governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton. Huckabee had a humorous encounter with Clinton one day when the governor called him to speak about a concern. Clinton understood that, like himself, one-fourth of Arkansas was Southern Baptist. He wanted to maintain a good relationship with the Baptists and reached out to Huckabee for some counsel on a matter. Thinking it was a friend playing a prank on him by impersonating the governor, Huckabee cleared his throat and began doing his own spot-on impersonation of Clinton. The real governor said, “No, seriously, this is Bill Clinton.” Eventually Huckabee realized it was, in fact, the governor on the phone, but not before establishing his credentials as a bona fide Clinton impersonator.14
Rex Horne, pastor of Immanuel Baptist in Little Rock, made national news in 1998 when denominational leaders in the SBC publicly questioned how the church could allow Clinton to be a “member in good standing” even after the sexual scandals of that year. But those events were still a lifetime away on the night in 1990 when Huckabee stood before Horne and the delegates to address the Convention with his sermon “The Ten Commendations.”
Huckabee began his address by pointing out the failure to communicate. “We’ve said a lot about each other, but not enough to each other.” He painted the denominational discord in terms of divorce: “Should our denomination go through a divorce, no one wins and everyone loses.” The crowd turned jubilant with applause and agreement when he hailed the sacrifice of bivocational and small-church pastors: “The greatest work among us is probably performed by the bi-vocational pastor and the pastor who serves as his own staff.” In one sweeping statement, he affirmed both orthodoxy and orthopraxy: “It doesn’t embarrass me one bit to let you know I believe that Adam and Eve were real people. What does embarrass me is when we draw lines of fellowship over the application and interpretation of the Bible rather than over the authority and inerrancy of the Bible.” Finally, he urged the delegates to turn away from fault-finding: “Trying to decide who’s wrong or even who’s most wrong won’t solve our crisis. . . . We can break rank with the prevailing opinion of a budget item and yet still break bread with each other when the vote is over.”15
Huckabee’s message caused “the messengers, who had filled every available seat and stair and were sitting in the aisles” to rise “for a prolonged and heartfelt standing ovation.” Sneed wrote, “Arkansas Baptists owe a debt of gratitude to President Mike Huckabee. Much of the harmony that our state convention enjoyed was a direct result of the excellent spirit and good-natured humor displayed by President Huckabee. Huckabee’s presidential message placed the controversy confronting the Southern Baptist Convention in proper perspective. This is an address that every Arkansas Baptist needs to read.”16 Following present-day custom among Baptists, the 1990 delegates voted by acclamation to give Huckabee a second year of office.
Huckabee found an opportunity to speak to national events in February 1991, due to the onset of what became known as the First Gulf War:
Our world is at war again, and with it comes the stinging reminder that people are by nature sinners. If the humanists were right in espousing the “universal goodness of man,” there would be no war or cause for war. . . . None of us want a war, but neither do we want the consequences of doing nothing while a demonic despot overruns neighbor nations and vows to annihilate others. . . . The reluctance of the world to rise up against the death machine of Hitler’s Nazi Germany resulted in millions of innocent men, women, and children being gassed.17
During his second year, Huckabee continued his work of unifying Baptists. That task was made increasingly difficult, however, whenever relationships within the national SBC disintegrated. At the June 1990 annual meeting of the SBC, the conservative candidate for president won again—a succession that had begun in 1979. The moderate voting bloc had worked hard and had hoped that they could win with their candidate, Daniel Vestal. But Pastor Morris Chapman defeated Vestal by a wide margin. That meeting would mark the beginning of the end of two groups under the same tent; in August 1990 the moderates held an inaugural meeting that led to the formation of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF).
Huckabee responded to the national events in his newspaper column:
What impact will recent events in the Southern Baptist Convention have upon us here in Arkansas? Good question. The answer, however, is not mine to give. . . . The “L” word that may characterize our greatest threat is not “liberalism,” but “legalism.” . . . Legalism is not limited to the theological camp of the conservatives, moderates, or anyone in between or beyond. . . . A legalist questions everyone else’s motives and mission but never sees a need to question his own.18
What made Huckabee, admittedly a theological conservative without any reservation, nevertheless respond to the denominational controversy in such manner? How was he able to maintain deep friendships with people on both sides of the denomination aisle? The answer is that Huckabee’s background in the perpetually divisive Baptist Missionary Association created within him a strong desire to unite on big ideas and issues. “The background that I have come from has had a major impact on the way I respond to the current controversy in the SBC,” he wrote. “I don’t want to give up my energy to things as small as those that we debated over in the BMA.” The newspaper explained some of those BMA log-jams: which version of the Bible was correct to use, the length of one’s hair, and whether or not church buildings should have kitchens on their premises. “I think that legalism is as big a curse as liberalism. Both are devastating to the gospel of Christ,” Huckabee said.19
In his 1991 swan song sermon as president, Huckabee spoke on “Seven Warning Signals for Arkansas Baptists” and hinted at where his own future might lie. He warned against isolationism: “There is a dangerous tendency of evangelicals in general and Baptists in particular to complain about the spiraling decline of the values of our nation and the integrity of those who lead it, but who at the same time feel that Christians ‘shouldn’t get involved’ . . . We cannot change the world if we refuse to participate in the institutions of society that dictate its direction.” We get a foretaste of Huckabee’s future political stump speeches as he speaks about “a battle to salvage our culture and our very civilization from a worldview that thinks man is good and God is dead.”20
Delegates to the meeting gave Huckabee a resounding standing ovation and thanked him for his peace-driven presidency. Huckabee’s tenure as ABSC president can be summed up in his analysis and approval of the SBC’s 1991 annual meeting—which he found to be a small step in the direction of peace and harmony. “Whenever Baptists gather, there’s certain to be some disagreement over various issues. It’s not wrong to disagree—it’s just wrong to be disagreeable.”21
Only thirty-six, Huckabee believed the ABSC presidency had been a great honor but felt it certainly could not be the apex of his professional career. In one of his final President’s Corner columns, one can see hints of where his mind was leading him. “It’s time for the torch to be passed. Two years ago, messengers attending the Arkansas Baptist State Convention placed upon me the mantle of this office and in so doing gave me one of the greatest privileges and challenges one can have. Arkansas Baptists represent one in every five Arkansans, and when as a body we speak (or fight) it’s worthy of attention. Fortunately, we’ve done more speaking than fighting during these past two years!”22
With one in five Arkansans holding membership in ABSC churches, Huckabee considered what his own next career step might be. With so much acclaim for his leadership coming from such a large number of his fellow citizens, he considered whether he had a base of support for a run for a statewide public office. With Clinton’s announcement and potential departure from Arkansas, political machines across the state began to stir into action. By the time of the ABSC meeting, Huckabee had already sought the counsel of old friends from college—guys who had told him, “Give me a call when you jump into politics and run for office.”
CHAPTER 21
EXPERIENCING GOD
1991
The defining moment for me was as I thought about who was making public policy. I came to the conclusion that a lot of people that were making it had no clue how real people lived.1
—MIKE HUCKABEE
IN ONE OF HIS LAST NEWSPAPER COLUMNS WRITTEN AS THE president of Arkansas Baptists, Mike Huckabee told of an insightful question posed to him by a Christian layman: “Do you preachers think you’re the only ones God can move around? Why is it when a preacher goes to another church, it’s ‘God’s will,’ but when a layman moves to another church, he’s a ‘church hopper’?” Huckabee said the man’s question helped him a lot. “As people come or go at our church, I’ve learned not to take it so personally. If they can say that they have come because the Spirit of God led them, or that they have left for the same reason, then we are all there by the same hand of the same God. The most important issue is not whether we are employed full-time by the church, but whether we are confident that we are where we are by divine destiny.”2
In this one paragraph, Huckabee intersected two theological themes central to his own biography: God’s will and the nature of Christian ministry. Huckabee used this man’s particular question—“Is it ever okay to leave and go to another church?”—to hint that he was thinking about leaving full-time pastoral church ministry. More important, he believed individual Christians could make this kind of decision—personal and private, yet having public consequences—with the confidence that they were following the will of God.
What does Huckabee mean when he talks about “the will of God”? This question relates specifically to the decisions a Christian makes in areas of life not explicitly defined by Scripture. How does a Christian know what to do?
In 1990, a Southern Baptist pastor and denominational leader published a book titled Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God. Christian books on this subject are common, but Henry Blackaby’s became a publishing phenomenon, selling more than seven million copies. The book, better described as a Bible study workbook with questions and blank lines for writing down answers, taught Blackaby’s vision that knowing God’s will was related to knowing God intimately and getting on board with what He was doing. The Huckabees studied through the book together. They read things like “We don’t choose what we will do for God; He invites us to join Him where He wants to involve us.” Or “The truth is that God can do anything He pleases through an ordinary person who is fully dedicated to Him.”3
After Huckabee entered politics, his interaction with Blackaby became personal when Huckabee invited him to dine at the governor’s mansion. Blackaby recalled what the governor told him that night: “He said that while he was the pastor of a church, the Lord had begun to impress on him that He wanted to use Mike in new ways. Huckabee had trained to be a church minister, and that is what he had been doing. But as he and his wife began to study Experiencing God, it became clear that God was leading him to resign from the great church he was leading and to run for governor of his state.”4
Knowing that Blackaby’s teaching influenced the Huckabees helps us better interpret his statements where he tips his hand and reveals how he makes life decisions.
For example, God’s will does not preclude sacrifice, suffering, or risk. For Huckabee, the guitar-selling poverty of his early days of marriage came to his mind when trying to decide whether to enter politics. “I was pastor of a large and growing church, president of Arkansas Baptist Convention, constantly being looked at by megachurches to come and be their pastor. I was running a television station as well as a church—and life was good,” he said.5
And the satisfaction with his life went beyond vocational fulfillment. His family had stability and happiness there in Texarkana. “You’ve got to understand something. We had a beautiful house and our kids were in great schools—and doing great in them too. Janet and I felt like God had already given us so much—beyond our dreams and beyond the comfort level we had known growing up in Hope.”6
So his running for Senate would risk upsetting these comforts, but Huckabee believed God’s wil
l for his life might involve walking down a path where personal happiness and financial security diminished, not increased.
Huckabee made this explicit when he talked about the actual night he and Janet made the decision to enter politics:
One night, after struggling for weeks about what to do, we took a long walk around our neighborhood, talking and trying to sort things out. If the goal of being a Christian was to be comfortable, we had arrived. But was that where we were supposed to stay? Could I simply say, “I’m a believer” and then kick back and take the world as it came? Jesus told us to be salt and light so our lives might have some kind of impact that will improve the world.
We made our decision that night. The following Sunday, I announced my plans to resign from the ministry, effective the first Sunday in February.7
A second principle Christians use for interpreting God’s will is to ask, “What do other people think of this? Do they concur?” This would never be an ultimate factor in making a decision, but it does play a part. Once, an interviewer asked why a church—even a small church—would have made him their pastor. Huckabee responded: “I didn’t know I couldn’t do it. . . . I felt like, Well, if they asked me, I must be able to do it, or they wouldn’t be asking me.”8 We can agree this principle doesn’t apply universally in all situations. But for Huckabee, how else does an eighteen-year-old preacher decide whether he should be preaching the sermons at a particular church, except to get up and do the duty on a given Sunday? Huckabee had been in Baptist churches long enough to know that if a congregation didn’t want to hear any more of your sermons, they wouldn’t.
Related to the last, a third principle is that your own perception of your aptitude shouldn’t be the starting point for discerning God’s will. Moses evaluated his speaking abilities and told God to find another messenger to stand before Pharaoh. Huckabee said, “It’s not about just, Do I have the ability or the experience, but if others have the confidence, then maybe God has a reason.”9