Mike Huckabee, President Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, told lawmakers he believes Mormons, Jews and Christians share a "spiritual" connection.
Huckabee, a prominent Evangelical, former governor of Arkansas and outspoken Zionist, faced a barrage of questions on the Mideast during his Senate confirmation hearing last Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Trump nominated Huckabee shortly after his reelection, touting him as a key figure to advance U.S. policy in the region, including a long-sought peace deal to end the 17-month war between Israel and Hamas.
The exchange began when Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah said his home state "has a very special relationship with Israel."
"I like to tease my friends with ties to Israel that until I was 18, I thought I grew up in Zion in Utah. We have Zion Park, we have a Jordan River. There's lots of ties," he said. "One of those ties is Brigham Young University, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), that has a campus there."
Responding to a question from Curtis about his feelings toward LDS, Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister, said, "The respect that I have for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extraordinary because I respect very much the commitment to family, to moral righteousness, to a sense of right and wrong."
"The spiritual connections between your church, mine, many churches in America, Jewish congregations, to the state of Israel is because we ultimately are people of the Book," he said. "We believe the Bible, and therefore that connection is not geopolitical, it is also spiritual, and to ignore that, to deny that, would be to make it very difficult for us to ever understand how to go forward in a relationship with them."
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Huckabee, a prominent Evangelical, former governor of Arkansas and outspoken Zionist, faced a barrage of questions on the Mideast during his Senate confirmation hearing last Tuesday on Capitol Hill. Trump nominated Huckabee shortly after his reelection, touting him as a key figure to advance U.S. policy in the region, including a long-sought peace deal to end the 17-month war between Israel and Hamas.
The exchange began when Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah said his home state "has a very special relationship with Israel."
"I like to tease my friends with ties to Israel that until I was 18, I thought I grew up in Zion in Utah. We have Zion Park, we have a Jordan River. There's lots of ties," he said. "One of those ties is Brigham Young University, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), that has a campus there."
Responding to a question from Curtis about his feelings toward LDS, Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister, said, "The respect that I have for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extraordinary because I respect very much the commitment to family, to moral righteousness, to a sense of right and wrong."
"The spiritual connections between your church, mine, many churches in America, Jewish congregations, to the state of Israel is because we ultimately are people of the Book," he said. "We believe the Bible, and therefore that connection is not geopolitical, it is also spiritual, and to ignore that, to deny that, would be to make it very difficult for us to ever understand how to go forward in a relationship with them."
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Huckabee calls Mormons, Christians, Jews 'people of the Book' at Senate hearing
Mike Huckabee, President Donald Trump s nominee for U S ambassador to Israel, told lawmakers he believes Mormons, Jews, and Christians share a spiritual connection
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