Last week, I told you about Jody Hice, a Southern Baptist pastor who is the Republican candidate to succeed Paul Broun in the House. Barring anything unforeseen, Hice is all but certain to replace Broun as the next Congressman from this district sweeping from the outer suburbs of Atlanta to the suburbs of Augusta. Judging from his views on guns, Hice is likely to replace Broun as the looniest member of the Georgia delegation. After all, back in 2012, he told his radio audience that the Second Amendment gives you the right to have any weapon that the government has.
Well, it turns out Hice isn’t just an extremist on guns. He’s a full-on culture warrior. Back in 2003, Hice stopped by the Atlanta studios of the Trinity Broadcasting Network for an appearance on that network’s flagship program, “Praise the Lord.” Hice told Ben Kinchlow, the former longtime co-host of “The 700 Club,” that legal efforts to keep church and state separate are nothing less than Satanic. At the time this interview aired, Hice had recently launched Ten Commandments Georgia, a group dedicated to displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. When Barrow County, about halfway between Atlanta and Athens, was sued for displaying a copy of the Ten Commandments in its courthouse, Hice helped raise tens of thousands of dollars to help Regent University law school dean Herb Titus defend the county in court.
But if Hice had his way, cases like these would be a thing of the past. He maintained that the devil was “infiltrating our society” through, among other things, rulings in favor of the separation of church and state. Judges who issue such rulings have “chipped away” at our “Christian rights.” He also maintained that unless Christians act fast, this country could wind up looking like Europe, where he said it’s possible to “feel the darkness with God’s removal from society.”
Later, he seemed to imply that electing people who don’t believe in God to office could be a very bad idea.
“Are we going to be a nation that is led by people who acknowledge God? Who acknowledge God’s law and acknowledge the role of God’s law in our society and the founding of our country? Or are we going to be led by people who totally reject God? It’s a frightening thing if we don’t rise up.”
Kinchlow poured gasoline on the fire when, in what felt like a redux of his “700 Club” days, he claimed that without “Judeo-Christian” values, “people end up killing each other.”
The whole show is pretty breathtaking. One of the guests was Roy Moore, who at the time was deep into his battle to keep the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building. But if you just want to watch Hice in action, PFAW has clips here and here.
As a sidenote to this story, when Barrow County lost in court in 2005, Hice left the county on the hook for $150,000 of the ACLU’s legal fees. In a letter to the Athens Banner-Herald, Hice crassly declared that the people who helped fund the legal battle paid for “an effort to defeat the ACLU, not pay them.” Apparently Hice is wanting to start fires, but isn’t willing to put them out. But that’s to be expected from a guy who thinks that the Second Amendment gives us the right to own small arsenals.
Granted, Hice is running in a district that would elect a comatose Republican; it has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+14. But it’s still important to shine the hot lights on him. Extremists like him are the ones who are truly empowered as long as the Republicans have control of the House.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
