The primary mission statement of this website is to show that atheists come in all kinds of flavors, including conservative and libertarian varieties. So it may seem a little strange that the second post on this site is about to criticize Republican Presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz, who is currently second in delegate count to Donald Trump. However, Cruz is quite literally the reason Free Market Atheist was created. It was a story about an endorsement accepted by Cruz, shared by Will Spencer on Facebook last month, and a subsequent discussion I had with him about how there are few non-liberal outlets willing to discuss the kind of story he shared, that promoted me to created the site. It’s not simply enough that conservative and libertarian atheists exist; we also have to be willing to call out politicians when it matters, especially when religion is the topic, even if we might agree with them on other subjects.

Pastor 1: Mike Bickle

This story that inspired this site involves Mike Bickle, Founder and Director of the Kansas City-based International House of Prayer. Bickle also runs the Israel Mandate, an effort to get Jews to convert to Christianity, upon a belief that the Second Coming of Jesus won’t happen until they do (I’m as of yet unsure if the rest of the world must also convert first). As any atheist knows, all end-time talk is awash with controversy, not the least the idea that 2/3 of the world will end up in Hell if the claims are true.

Well, in the course of trying to get Jews to convert, Bickle has made some controversial statements regarding this process. Specifically, he has some ideas on what will happen if they don’t hurry up. He also has claims on what has happened in the past. Namely: Hitler. The Times of Israel has some great coverage on this:

For Bickle, this is what explains Nazi Germany’s murder of more than six million Jews. In a 2011 sermon, Bickle cited a passage from Jeremiah 16:16 to elucidate the attempted extermination of European Jewry.

“The Lord says, ‘I’m going to give all 20 million of them the chance to respond to the fishermen. And I give them grace.; And he says, ‘And if they don’t respond to grace, I’m going to raise up the hunters.’ And the most famous hunter in recent history is a man named Adolf Hitler,” he told an audience.

Don’t take their word for it, there’s video of the statements he’s made (relevant parts start at 1:00; hunter part starts at 5:54):

TL;DR: A bunch of Jews are going to end up in prison camps and die. Only about a 1/3 of the Jewish population is going to be saved by God. In the end times, they’ll be lured to Israel first by “fisherman,” who will use the bait of grace, and later the slackers will be hunted down. All of this according to scripture, that is. Oh, and Adolf Hitler was the last great hunter.

Just as bad, he claims God has scattered Jews around the Earth in modern times because of perversion and sin on their part. As you might imagine, this kind of rhetoric is not going to go over well with them, or with liberals, who love any reason to criticize Cruz. And it hasn’t. It’s also been covered by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and The Huffington Post, among others. One of Cruz’s senior advisors, Nick Muzin, played down the statements as simply scripture in a statement to the JTA:

My understanding is that he was paraphrasing the words of the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah. I know that he has made support for Israel and the Jewish people a central part of his mission.

But it’s not simply support for Israel. Bickle’s primary mission is to get them to convert, and he’s using scary-sounding language to achieve it.

The problem is, this has happened before, in 2008 during Senator John McCain’s campaign.  If you recall, one pastor John Hagee used the same passages from the Book of Jeremiah to refer to Hilter as one of the hunters:

Audio from a sermon in the 1990s captured Hagee, like Bickle, citing the Book of Jeremiah and saying, “If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that.”

Here’s more video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ec-kZGKnQ8

At the time the statements first came up, McCain refused to reject his endorsement. He eventually did reject it…three months later, after gaining the nomination. Now we’re here, eight years later, in the same predicament, and apparently Cruz learned nothing from McCain because he has continued to accept Bickle’s endorsement.

P.S. The practice of trying to get Jews to convert to Christianity is so controversial that Pope Francis said in December that Catholics shouldn’t try to do it.

Pastor 2: Kevin Swanson

Apparently, Cruz will reject some endorsements, such as that of Kevin Swanson, who hosted a the National Religious Liberties Conference last November and made a speech where he reminded us that the the Bible calls for the execution of gays by the government:

Scary stuff, right? But not to fear, gay people, for he says the government shouldn’t execute you quite yet. We’ve gotta give you time to repent, you see! Then, apparently, maybe the government kills those who don’t? I don’t know. How long should the repentance grace period (no pun intended) last? He doesn’t elaborate on the matter.

He also suggested parents would be better to drown themselves than let their children learn about/from Harry Potter’s mentor, Albus Dumbledore, who happens to be gay:

More recently, he’s called for girl scout leaders to do the same; he has a particularly long history of being outspoken against the girl scouts.

Anyway, immediately after he spoke, Cruz come on stage to give his speech about religious liberty and the state of faith in America, interacting with Swanson. Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal also spoke at the event. When this video first come out, the Cruz campaign tried to downplay it like they did with Bickle, saying that Swanson’s call for execution “wasn’t explicit.” But it was. Maybe he wasn’t calling for lethal injections tomorrow, but he did seem to suggest that it should happen at some nebulous point in the future, after the time for repenting is up.

A Cruz spokesperson did finally admit last December that Cruz shouldn’t have attended the event, in an interview with USA Today. But that’s it. As far as I know, Cruz himself has never said anything and there’s been no larger effort on the part of the campaign to distance himself from Swanson. I have to imagine this will come back to haunt him in the general, should he make it there.

Why It Matters

A lot of criticism has been heaped onto Donald Trump for receiving endorsements from white supremacists like David Duke and for re-tweeting statements from Neo-Nazis and having a not insignificant level of support from that group. However, very little attention has been given to Cruz and endorsements he’s received from radical pastors like Swanson, who are calling for the death of gays and parents who accept gays living as who they are, or like Bickle, who makes anti-Semitic statements.

It doesn’t stop there. Swanson and Bickle may be two of the most outspoken endorsers of Cruz with unpalatable views but they’re not the only ones. Cruz’s Michigan campaign legislative co-chair, Michigan State Rep. Gary Glenn, also the President of the America Family Association of Michigan, thinks that states should be free to criminalize homosexuality:

During a 2011 interview, Glenn, who also serves as the president of the American Family Association of Michigan, was asked if he supported criminalizing homosexuality. “The short answer to your question is yes, we believe that states should be free to regulate and prohibit behavior that’s a violation of community standards and a proven threat to public health and safety — including, as most of the United States did throughout its history, homosexual behavior,” he said.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because these laws were struck down by the Supreme Court in Lawrence vs. Texas (2003). At the time, these laws existed in 13 states, but if Glenn got his way they’d be back on the books. As far as I’m aware, Cruz himself hasn’t spoken directly on the issue of criminalizing homosexuality, just marriage, and he’s said that states should also be able to legislate on that matter. Cruz was Solicitor General of Texas at the time the case was argued, but Texas’ AG office refused to defend the law before the Court.

The point is that Cruz is associating with a number of troubling characters, at least one of whom (Glenn) could theoretically find his way into a Cruz administration or an appointment of some sort. Cruz’s refusal to refuse their endorsement, or do so in a very quiet way, speaks volumes. When Jeremiah Wright’s speeches were uncovered in 2008, President Obama was forced to very publicly distance himself.

Like Obama, the senator should send a clear message and publicly distance himself from Bickle and Swanson. He should also make it very clear what his views are about Glenn’s position on criminalizing homosexuality, though, honestly, dropping him from the campaign would probably be better. The time to do it is now, before the general election, even if the chance of him receiving the nomination is quickly becoming more of a fantasy than anything else.