Mike Huckabee’s Religious Authoritarianism: Authoritarian, Vertical Politics

By Austin Cline

Many expressed concern that Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was more of a Christian Nationalist than he let on. His claim that Christians must win America for Christ was highly suggestive, and his desire to amend the Constitution to align it with ‘God’s standards’ was worse. There are also less explicit ways to communicate authoritarian and theocratic principles to those who are in the know, for example with Mike Huckabee’s rhetoric about ‘vertical politics.’

Mike Huckabee revealed some interesting views while delivering a sermon in a church:

“When we become believers, it’s as if we have signed up to be part of God’s Army, to be soldiers for Christ,” Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience. …Huckabee mixed homespun jokes into his sermon and added a more religious tone than in his political speeches, not just quoting from the Bible but citing specific verses and talking about the serious side of faith.

“When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go,” he said. “It’s no longer your life; you’ve signed it over.” Likening service to God to service in the military, Huckabee said “there is suffering in the conditioning for battle” and “you obey the orders.”

Source: The Washington Post

A person’s life is no longer their own? Christians have to “obey the orders” in some “battle”? This makes more sense in light of his statement in the New Hampshire debate that Americans are “tired of everything being horizontal — left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican. They’re looking for vertical leadership that leads up, not down.”

What did Huckabee mean by “horizontal” and “vertical” leadership? These are code words: horizontal leadership means limited authority among equals while vertical leadership means an authoritarian system with one or few absolute leaders at the top while the rest “obey the orders” they are given because their lives do not belong to themselves anymore.

Read the whole thing here: About.com