I have to say that this does not seem promising at all:
Renowned social conservative and self-proclaimed “Christocrat,” the Rev. Rick Scarborough of the Harvest Point Church in Nacogdoches led 15 pastors from multiple denominations in a candidate forum on Tuesday.
Behind closed doors of the fellowship hall of the First Christian Church, the church leaders interviewed dozens of elected state officials and dozens more local candidates, all seeking to be elected or re-elected to office this year.
“This is the first time we’ve ever gotten involved in the primaries, so because of the wide range of candidates from supreme court justices to the lone candidate for county surveyor, we had to divide them up into three groups and issue them our questions,” Scarborough said. “We first compiled the questionnaire that we had them fill out for us that covered a range of things, including the Mandate to Save America'”
Scarborough and other culturally conservative leaders from around the nation helped draft the Mandate to Save America, which is a 10-point list of ideals that they believe elected leaders should commit to in order to “break the bonds of tyranny and give birth to a new nation of freedom, justice and hope.”
The mandate calls for the nation to oppose same-sex marriages, give parents control over their child’s education and demands the right to publicly acknowledge the existence of God.
After the candidates turned in their various questionnaires, they were then presented with several more questions from the pastor groups.
“We had them answer eight questions personally on issues ranging from taxes, a couple of social issues, and we discussed their feelings about allowing Intelligent Design to be taught alongside evolution in public schools,” Scarborough said. “This is a way for us to ascertain their positions on not only specific issues, but more importantly character issues. We encourage people to vote their values.”
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“We believe Christians have a real responsibility, and we pastors especially, to find out where the candidates stand and what they believe, and then give those answers to the people,” he said. “We want them to vote not as Republicans or Democrats, but as we like to say, followers of Jesus Christ. We’re trying to mix church and state God’s way.”
Scarborough will reportedly make the findings public before primary election day next week and has plans, though this newly created Nacogdoches County Pastors Roundtable, to host a debate in September and is also launching an effort to “register a record number of Christians in Nacogdoches County to vote in the November elections.”
