Jim Garlow

Yesterday, Newt Gingrich held another conference call for Religious Right supporters, seeking to mobilize them ahead of the Republican primary in Florida.

The call was hosted by Jim Garlow and featured several other of the Gingrich campaign's Faith Coalition leaders explaining why they had decided to support Gingrich ... and the consensus was that if President Obama wins re-election, it means the end of Western Civilization:

Mat Staver: I believe that if Speaker Gingrich wins Florida next Tuesday, he wins the nomination. If he wins the nomination, he beats President Barack Obama and we have not a cloud hanging over us in November and December of 2012 but we begin to see the clouds dissipating and some ray of sunshine of hope return to this land.

Jim Garlow: At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the United States as we know her will cease to exist as will, then, Western Civilization. Those who are discerning, those who are intuitive to what is happening morally and economically in our nation understand the truth.

George Barna: As you mentioned Jim, for the last twenty years I have steadfastly refused to endorse any individuals or organizations or products. But as I've analyzed the severity of America's situation today, I've come to believe that such self-restrictions are a luxury that we can no longer afford. So after carefully studying all the candidates in regards to the needs I just described and assessing their ability to win in November, I concluded that Newt Gingrich is the best man for the job.

Jim Garlow: We are in a situation that is so crisic in America, I'm actually stunned that President Obama could do this much destruction to the nation in a three year span. I never anticipated that this much harm in the moral and economic arenas of our nation could be brought on by one particular president.

Don Wildmon: This is not a typical election. This is an election unlike any ever held in our country. We're not just voting for a president; we're voting for the continuation of Western Civilization. If those who are listening think that what we enjoy, the freedoms we enjoy, the right to practice our Christan faith, is merely an accident and is there, it's not, people paid for it. And we can lose it, and we will lose it, if we lose this next election. What's at stake is everything that the human race, Western Civilization, has fought for for the last two thousand years.

When Gingrich joined the call, the thrice-married candidate served up some red meat to the audience by declaring that efforts to grant equal marriage rights to gays and lesbians are "pagan behaviors":

It's pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it's a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

Finally, Gingrich explained that he didn't really have any interest in being president but decided that he had to do so because all the other Republicans are so terrible so that he had a moral obligation to step up and save this nation and that he would just magnanimously have to suffer the insults that come his way:

I want people to understand, I'm a volunteer. Callista and I had very long talks for over a year and then we talked with our two daughters and our two son-in-laws because we knew if we tried to offer help the country that we would be subjected to news media assaults, we'd be subjected to vicious gossip, we'd be subjected to people on the web saying horrible things and we'd be subjected to negative ads from our opponents. And we concluded that we are in so much trouble and we are in such grave danger of losing the America that we grew up in and the lack of Republican ability to articulate and communicate and defend is so great that both of us - this was a dual decision - we both concluded that we had a moral obligation to endure whatever comes and to at least offer, as citizens, to try and be of service.

Pastor Jim Garlow, the Proposition 8 campaign organizer and now co-chair of Newt Gingrich’s Faith Leaders Coalition, appeared on The Steve Deace Show Friday, where he argued that Gingrich is the only candidate in a position to stop President Obama and “the radical homosexual agenda” from causing the imminent “destruction of the definition of marriage.”Garlow appeared on the show to defend the twice-divorced Gingrich, whose second wife last week claimed that he wanted an open marriage with his then-mistress and now-third wife Callista, and described Gingrich as the savior of marriage and Western civilization. He said that Obama is “going to destroy America as we know it and eventually bring a halt to Western civilization as we know it” and soon it will be “virtually illegal to say the name Jesus”:

Garlow: We have got to get Romney stopped because of his policies and we must get Obama stopped if we’re going to save this nation. Obama may be a nice guy, I have no problem with that, but his ideology is going to destroy America as we know it and eventually bring a halt to Western civilization as we know it. It’s not melodramatic language, it’s not flamboyant, it’s where we are right now. We cannot economically and morally survive any more of Obama’s leadership and his ideology, therefore, we need the powerhouse of Gingrich coming in with that intellectually bandwidth to take him on and bring a halt to it.

…

We have come to a posture where I am absolutely astounded at the spiritual damage that Barack Obama’s ideology has done to this nation; I would never have believed three years ago he could’ve done this much in terms of moral and economic damage. Our religious liberties are evaporating at a pace—it’s going to be virtually illegal to say the name Jesus before long at the rate they’re going, or stand for any kind of authentic, biblical, historic Christianity.

Where we’re seeing it the most is we have two locomotives on the same track going at each other with full speed and one of them is going to be left standing when this day is over, it’s either going to be the radical homosexual agenda or it’s going to be religious liberty. They cannot both coexist in the same nation at the same time. Then you add in the dimension the destruction of the definition of marriage itself. I was in the auditorium at the Saddleback Civil Forum when candidate Obama said marriage is one man, one woman, people clapped and cheered, we didn’t believe him then, our concerns proved to be exactly right, and now President Obama is destroying, decimating 5,000 years’ worth of history.

Is the Religious Right beginning to coalesce behind Newt Gingrich? Yesterday, the former Speaker hosted a conference call with the members of his Faith Leaders Coalition: American Family Association founder Don Wildmon, Religious Right pollster George Barna and pastor Jim Garlow. Now, Gingrich is racking up additional endorsements from Religious Right figures just days before conservative activists are set to meet in Texas to see if they can get behind one of the presidential candidates.

Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind series on the End Times and founder of the Council for National Policy, and his wife Beverly, the founder and chairman of Concerned Women for America, endorsed Gingrich, warning that America may “end up being like the godless socialist countries of Europe,” as did Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, one of the country’s most stridently anti-gay groups, and the dean of the Liberty University School of Law. “America will be unrecognizable if Obama is elected for four more years,” Staver said. “We need a strong leader with domestic, international and political experience who can inspire a new conservative resurgence in the line of Ronald Reagan. Speaker Gingrich is the clear choice.”

Tim LaHaye has claimed that President Obama is a socialist and not a Christian who is bringing America “closer to the Apocalypse,” and Staver has referred to Obama as a tyrant who is making the U.S. “one of the world’s immoral leaders” by opposing countries that criminalize homosexuality. 

Gingrich even appeared in TV advertisements for Liberty University School of Law, and LU ran ads featuring Gingrich in Iowa right before the caucus. While appearing on David Barton’s radio program WallBuilders Live, Gingrich said he would look to graduates of Liberty University when making appointments to the judiciary.

The LaHaye’s, Staver and Wildmon all endorsed Huckabee in the 2008 election. While Rick Santorum has picked up the support of social conservative figures such as Gary Bauer, Maggie Gallagher and Bob Vander Plaats, it appears that Gingrich is winning over Religious Right leaders who are desperate to defeat Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: The Gingrich campaign released this statement from Tim LaHaye:

“During the last three years our nation has been led by liberal secularists who have tried their best to remove God from our public square and the elimination of the Biblical principles our founding fathers built this nation on” said LaHaye.

“Please prayerfully consider going to the polls on January 21 and help elect Newt Gingrich, a proven conservative who has the best chance of replacing the present occupant of the White House with a man with a proven record of appointing conservatives to office that can return this country to the constitutional principles that God has chosen to bless for over two hundred years” he said.

Pastor LaHaye also pointed to Speaker Gingrich’s qualifications as the best candidate to defeat President Obama as one of the reasons for his endorsement.

“It seems apparent the Republican candidates have come down to two possible winners,” LaHaye said. “As my friend, the late Dr. Jerry Falwell told me personally, ‘Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most qualified man in America to run as president of the United States”… We agree!’”

"I am honored to have Tim's endorsement. His work as both a minister and author is truly unmatched," said Gingrich. "Tim will be a terrific partner for the Gingrich Faith Leaders Coalition as we work to combat the influence of radical secularism and activist judges."

Yesterday, leading Religious Right activist and Gingrich-surrogate Jim Garlow appeared on The Steve Deace Show, where he joined former congressman J.C. Watts in praising Gingrich. Deace, who recently endorsed Gingrich, asked Garlow why evangelical voters should back Gingrich when many feel there are candidates who are more ideologically pure and do not have Gingrich’s personal baggage. Garlow commented that Religious Right voters continue to be “defeated and frankly humiliated” by “hyper-spiritualizing” elections, when they should be backing candidates who have a chance at winning. He said Bachmann, Perry and Santorum do not stand a chance against “the Romney machine,” and that Christians need to start using a “healthy, biblical, biblically-founded pragmatism” and that “the Holy Spirit can show us” in order to win political fights:

Garlow: The second component is that we do not as Christians assess the problem quickly enough with a healthy, biblical, biblically-founded pragmatism. For example, I see people hyper-spiritualizing this election, they say, ‘well God parted the Red Sea,’ well he did it once! But he told Noah to build a boat, in other words, get in there and float on this thing. So we’re being out-fought, unfortunately, because we hyper-spiritualize way too much. Let me make it real, ground-tested and practical, and this will probably disturb some people. Michele Bachmann is wonderful but she has no cash and no traction; Rick Perry is wonderful, I think he’s absolutely fabulous, I hope he has strong influence in the nation in the future along with Michele Bachmann, he has lots of cash but his articulation skills have harmed him seriously and he cannot overcome them, not now; Rick Santorum is wonderful but he has no cash and no machinery, if he wins Iowa he needs to be spending $3 million a week minimum to carry him through to try keep up with the Romney machine, so Romney’s best interest is to land Rick Santorum right up there at the top. People are not thinking through a strategy and by lack of a biblically-founded pragmatism that the Holy Spirit can show us, the lack of a strategy, we are being defeated and frankly humiliated and our biblical rights are being robbed from us.

Last week, Garlow interviewed Gingrich on a conference call with Iowa pastors that also featured American Family Association founder Don Wildmon and “Restoration Project” organizer David Lane, both of whom previously supported Rick Perry but have since endorsed Gingrich. On the call, Wildmon warned conservatives against splitting their vote (2:45). Gingrich criticized abortion rights (8:15), marriage equality, which he called “a violation of the core framework of our civilization” (9:20), and the judiciary (10:50), warning that “the Obama, European secular socialism is fundamentally different and in a key way threatens our rights as citizens” by turning Americans into subjects of the state: