FORT WORTH, Texas–During last week’s Texas State Republican Convention, Rafael Cruz, father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz and an evangelical pastor in the Dallas area, spoke with Breitbart Texas about his outreach efforts in the faith community and the role he believes religion should play in politics.
Cruz researched the political activism of the evangelical Christian community, and discovered a statistic that “really disturbed” him: out of 65 million evangelical Christians in the United States, only about fifty percent of them registered to vote, and only about fifty percent of those who were registered actually voted. “That means three out of four evangelical Christians stayed home,” Cruz said. “That’s over 48 million that didn’t vote.”
Recognizing that many pastors were “scared to death hiding behind their pulpit,” worried about risking their tax exempt status, Cruz nonetheless issued a challenge to pastors to “get outside of the four walls of the church” as they preached the gospel, “the whole gospel,” which must necessarily include political activism.
“The Bible talks a lot about politics. As a matter of fact, the Bible tells you exactly how to vet a candidate. It tells you exactly how to decide who to vote for.” As support for his position, Cruz cited a passage from Exodus where Moses is advised by his father-in-law Jethro of how to form a government for his people, and four factors that should be considered:
“Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens.”
Cruz points out that this verse says “you select,” not “God appoints,” showing that God intended for the people to elect representatives to lead them, in a federalist form of government, with the “leaders of thousands, hundreds, of fifties and of tens” similar to our modern federal, state, and local governments.
After discussing in detail the factors from Exodus 18:21 that should be present in political candidates, Cruz further emphasized the religious foundations of our nation’s history:
“The Constitution is totally based on the Word of God…29 of the 56 signers of the Declaration [of Independence] were seminary graduates. They were preachers, they were theologians, they were men of God. The Constitution was written on the knees of the framers, because they were on their knees at the Constitutional Convention, praying for wisdom from above.”
Cruz concluded the interview encouraging people of faith to not only vote, but to take an active role in the political process, and consider running for office.
Sarah Rumpf is a political and communications consultant living in Austin. You can follow her on Twitter at @rumpfshaker.
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