OCTOBER 19, 2020 BY MICHAEL STONE
Theocracy Alert: Religious extremist and GOP Senator James Lankford argues God wants Christian men to serve in government.
Lankford, speaking on a conservative Christian podcast, made his argument for why he believes God wants “Godly men” to serve in the government.
The U.S. senator representing Oklahoma argued that “the key to changing our nation is Godly men” while claiming that God wants Godly men with a “vital faith” to serve in government.
On the podcast Lankford said:
If the godly men of this nation would actually love their wife, love their children and would actually walk with God in the workplace, we would not have the nation that we’re in right now.
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If your faith is something that affects your weekends; That’s not a faith—that’s a hobby. A hobby is something you do on weekends. Faith is something that permeates every part of what you do.
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God has an interest in what’s happening in politics. It’s not that we’re a theocracy. We’re not a theocracy. We’re a republic. But it is clear that God, as the Creator, is interested in who’s actually serving in government as well and what their values and what their morals really are and what their priorities are. So for folks that are hesitating and saying, ‘Gosh, politics is such a dirty business. It’s like journalism or Hollywood. It’s such a dirty business. I don’t know if I want to get into it.’ I’ll say to them, ‘What is better? No salt or salt being applied? If you have an interest in getting involved in that, I know it’s hard. I know it’s difficult. Go apply salt to it and see what happens.’
Note that Lankford at one point denies that the U.S. is a theocracy, yet the implication of his argument is clear: he wants a Christian theocracy because he believes that is what God wants.
Lankford went on to note that “God has a lot to say about government and those who govern” at one point declaring:
If you look at the Old Testament, 36 of the 39 books in the Old Testament were written to, by or about a political leader. If you look at a third of the pages of the New Testament, not the total books, but of the pages of the New Testament, the book of Luke and the book of Acts, both of those were written to a political leader to be able to explain the truth of the gospel to them.
Lankford confessed that he knows that God calls Godly men to government because God called him. Describing how God called him, Lankford said:
It wasn’t like lightning in the clouds. It wasn’t, you know, some message. It wasn’t. ‘Dear James, thou shalt run for Congress.’ It wasn’t anything like that. It was this overwhelming sense of ‘this what I have to do.’
And for seven months, I struggled with that because I had no background in politics. I’m not a lawyer. I have no one in my family who’s in politics. I don’t have money personally. I don’t have any of that.
But it was this over and over and over again: ‘This is what “Follow Me” looks like. You told students for years that the calling of God is to “Follow Me and trust God.” Now it’s your turn. You’ve got to do this.
And so for seven months, I told God, ‘This is crazy.’ And for seven months, He said, ‘Follow me.’ And so I resigned from my position in September 2009 and announced to my friends I was running for Congress.
After serving two terms as a GOP congressman Lankford was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014. At the time of his election he promised to use his biblical worldview to address national problems.
Bottom line: Religious extremist and GOP Senator James Lankford argues God wants Christian men to serve in government.
