Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is urging evangelical pastors to jump into politics to stop a drive by left-wing politicians and judges to rid the nation of the religious beliefs “that made us famous.”
Newt Gingrich Speaks to Pastors from American Renewal Project on Vimeo.
In a well-received video to the growing “Pastors and Pews” group headed by evangelical organizer David Lane, the Republican thought leader said, “You’re at a moment in history that is as defining as anything in the Old Testament.”
Gingrich spelled that out as a threat by the left to impose “atheistic values,” and reduce religion in America to an hour at Sunday services.
“We’re now engaged in a two-front war. On the one front you have a ‘Secular Totalitarianism’ that wants to use the power of government to coerce us on every level. To define for us what we’re allowed to think, what we’re allowed to say, and to establish a politically-correct set of rules for college campuses. To determine even what happens inside of churches and synagogues, and to impose on us left-wing, frequently, atheistic values, and to say in effect, ‘You’re allowed to sort of, vaguely, believe in your faith as long as you don’t talk about it, certainly don’t do anything in public about it, and that religion should be reduced to one-hour on Sunday’s; and even then you better be careful what you say,” said Gingrich, a former presidential candidate.
Lane has been organizing and urging evangelicals and pastors to register to vote, and file to run for office. His effort was prompted by polling showing that evangelicals don’t vote in numbers that would give them a big influence in elections.
Through Pastors and Pews, part of Lane’s American Renewal Project, he has helped get some 200 evangelical pastors to run for local office, and even more are planning to run in upcoming elections.
In the current election, he has established a ground game to push evangelicals to the polls, making 200,000 phone calls and knocking on another 200,000 doors. He has a goal of 1 million calls and door knocks by November 8th.
He is not pushing any specific presidential candidate, instead telling Secrets, “America’s survival is on the line.”
That’s where Gingrich has been a help, pounding that message in his nine-minute video initially shown at last week’s Pastors and Pews event in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“A lot of these left-wing secular judges, left-wing secular lawyers, and activist groups are trying to coerce Americans into giving-up the beliefs that made us famous. Forget that the Pilgrims came here for religious liberty, forget that the Jamestown Colony, which people think of as secular, actually had church services fourteen times a week, forget that the core of America, as defined by Lincoln, and redefined by Eisenhower, is a nation under God. That has been the heart of who we are, our rights come from our Creator, they don’t come from some random thing,” said the former speaker.
He told the pastors, “You’re at a point where some people have to have the courage to witness for Christ, some people have to have the courage to stand up and tell the truth to their flock, and some people have to have the courage to get into the public arena themselves.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
