Huckabee on Getting into Heaven

Before speaking to a gathering of Michigan pastors last night, Mike Huckabee spoke to a Spartanburg, South Carolina congregation in the morning. From the Associated Press:

Republican Mike Huckabee spoke from the pulpit Sunday, not as a politician but as the preacher he used to be, delivering a sermon on how merely being good isn't enough to get into heaven.

....On Sunday in South Carolina, Huckabee avoided politics entirely, instead preaching about humility and trusting in Jesus to open the gates of heaven.

"The criteria to get into heaven is you have to be not good, but perfect. That's the real challenge in it," he said at First Baptist North Spartanburg, a megachurch with 2,500 members.

"On that day, when I pull up, I'll be asked, 'Do you have what it takes to get in?'" Huckabee said. "And if I ask, 'Well, what does it take to get in?"Gotta be perfect.'"

"Well, I'm afraid I don't have that, but you know what, I won't be there alone that day. Somebody is going to be with me. His name is Jesus, and he's promised that he would never leave me or forsake me," he said.

Asked by reporters later if he thinks only Christians will go to heaven, Huckabee refused to say. He often says that as a minister, he joked that he doesn't even believe all Baptists are going to heaven.

"I'm going to stick to the things that make it critical for me to be president of the United States," Huckabee said Sunday. "I have deep convictions about who goes and who doesn't, but as far as who makes that decision, it isn't me, it's God. I'm going to leave that up to him."

He argued that the Constitution forbids a political candidate from being subjected to a religious litmus test.

As it noted yesterday, God-o-Meter would ordinarily agree with that logic. But Huckabee's the one implying that evangelical Christian voters should apply a religious litmus test to their candidates. Nevertheless, God-o-Meter notes that he did not say as much during yesterday's pulpit address. Huck was speaking as a pastor, and kept politics out of it. But he doesn't always operate that way.