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Sarah Posner

Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist, author, and an expert on the intersection of religion and politics. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Nation, Salon, The Washington Post, and Religion Dispatches. Read more at her website, http://sarahposner.com.

 

Recent Articles

The FundamentaList (No. 15)

Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney jockey for the support of the Christian base.

Sarah PosnerJan 02, 2008
1. The Meaning of Huckmas The last Sunday before the caucuses, Mike Huckabee backed off from giving a scheduled sermon at an Iowa church, saying he wanted to worship instead of speak. But on the previous Sunday, just two days before Christmas, in front of a packed crowd at John Hagee's 5,000-seat Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, Huckabee equated real believers in Christ with the lowly shepherds who heralded the arrival of the newborn king, and selfish nonbelievers with Herod, King of Judea, who felt so threatened by Jesus' arrival that he ordered all baby boys to be murdered. Believers, he maintained, are unselfish and want to serve Jesus; the nonbelievers, like Herod, want power and money all to themselves and refuse to worship the son of God. Although Huckabee has insisted that he didn't replace the Arkansas capitol dome with a steeple and that his comments in religious settings shouldn't be misconstrued as theocratic, it was hard for this Jew in the pew (in the church that...

PRINCE OF DARKNESS WEIGHS IN ON BAPTIST DISCONTENT WITH HUCKABEE.

Sarah PosnerDec 26, 2007
Last week, Robert Novak wrote about why some of the architects of the 1970's-era conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention don't like Mike Huckabee . Although some of them have enthusiastically endorsed their fellow SBC; preacher, one notable exception is Paul Pressler , who endorsed Fred Thompson . According to Novak, Pressler's objection is his concern that "Huckabee plays to the establishment and would be subservient to the State Department and the New York Times ." But even Novak seemed disconcerted by a Huckabee fundraiser in Texas last week, hosted by Steven Hotze , whom Novak describes as a Christian Reconstructionist leader. explained by Bruce Prescott , Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists explains Christian Reconstructionism: At its root, Reconstructionism is a militant Biblicism. . . . Stripped to its barest essentials, here is their blueprint for America. Their ultimate goal is to make the U.S. Constitution conform to a strict, literal...

The FundamentaList (No. 14): Huck-a-Muck Edition

Waiting for end times, banning gay marriage, and Huckabee's Christmas surprise: A foreign policy!

Sarah PosnerDec 19, 2007
1. Huckabee's Christmas Surprise: A Foreign Policy! Until Mitt Romney demanded that Mike Huckabee apologize for daring to criticize President Bush's "arrogant bunker mentality," not much was known about Huckabee's foreign policy -- a frightening prospect, given his frontrunner status in some early primary states, including Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, and Michigan -- and his propensity to hang around with pre-millenial dispensationalists . The most Zev Chavets could wring out of Huckabee for his New York Times Magazine profile was that he likes to read Thomas Friedman and Frank Gaffney and thinks that Duncan Hunter would be just dandy as secretary of defense. It was odd then, that just a few days after the Times Magazine piece ran, Huckabee's foreign policy treatise appeared in Foreign Affairs . In tone, at least, it was decidedly more Friedman-esque than Gaffney-esque; even so, given Huckabee's past deer-in-the-headlights reactions to foreign policy questions, it seemed to come...

HUCKABEE WRAPS HIMSELF IN REAGAN-O-STOLGIA.

Sarah PosnerDec 14, 2007
Just a few weeks ago Mike Huckabee was touting how his campaign is "not about high-paid consultants" but about "ordinary people who've come from as far away as Oregon and Florida to get to Iowa, many of whom are coming up there from Southern states where they're having to buy a coat so they can survive going door-to-door, answering phones, getting out material and signing up people for the caucuses." He met with Ronald Reagan's 1984 chief campaign strategist, Ed Rollins, who reminisced, Huckabee told the Associated Press, that "'we were so broke, we were sleeping three to a room in New Hampshire and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.'" Now, Huckabee said of Reagan, "he's the icon, and everybody wraps themselves up in Ronald Reagan . . . . he's the gold standard of the Republican Party. He was anything but that, prior to his election and his term." This afternoon Huckabee is expected to announce that Rollins will be his national campaign chair. No word on whether they are going...

HUCKABEE APOLOGIZES.

Sarah PosnerDec 13, 2007
On CNN yesterday, Mike Huckabee said he had apologized to Mitt Romney for his "innocent" question about whether Mormons believe Jesus and Satan were brothers: Speaking with CNN Wednesday, Huckabee expressed disbelief that the comment has caused an uproar. "We were having a conversation over several hours, the conversation was about religion and he was trying to press me on my thoughts of Mitt Romney's religion, and I said 'I don't want to go there.'" Huckabee said. "I really didn't know. Well, he was telling me things about the Mormon faith, because he frankly is well-schooled on comparative religions. As a part of that conversation, I asked the question, because I had heard that, and I asked it, not to create something -- I never thought it would make the story." At the National Review , whose editors have endorsed Romney, Jim Geraghty called Huckabee on his feigned ignorance:"The apology is the right move, but I'm going to call horsepuckey on Huckabee's claim that a New York Times...

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