James Garfield

Posted by Brian Tubbs Nov 29, 2007

Baptist minister turned politician Mike Huckabee is now firmly in the top tier of candidates for the Republican nomination for President. If Huckabee wins, he will be the second preacher in American history to achieve the Republican presidential nomination.

Some say that an ordained minister should not be elected President of the United States. These folks usually cite the First Amendment's prohibition against any "establishment" of religion and the oft-misquoted phrase "separation of church and state." (That phrase appears nowhere in the US Constitution itself, but comes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Baptist organization - and has been used by Supreme Court rulings concerning the First Amendment).

The truth is that preachers and/or active church leaders have always played an active role in politics, some even rising to the presidency (or close to it). Jimmy Carter, for example, was not an ordained preacher, but is a bestselling author on overtly religious subjects (see Living Faith as an example) and a popular Sunday School teacher. Jesse Jackson, an ordained Baptist minister, has twice run for President and remains a formidable presence in the Democratic Party.

For his part, James Garfield was a staunch Christian and revivalist preacher. With his election to the US Senate in 1859 and his military involvement in the Civil War, his life moved away from full-time ministry and toward politics. Like Huckabee has since the early 1990s, Garfield stayed on the political path, becoming our 20th President.

If it was constitutionally acceptable for Americans to elect a former preacher as President in 1880, then it's constitutionally acceptable to do so in 2008.