Former Baptist pastor and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon in Henderson, N.C., Sept. 24, 2024. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)
HENDERSON, N.C. (RNS) — He was the star attraction two years ago, the keynoter introduced as “North Carolina’s next governor,” the perfect messenger to encourage church leaders to run for office and govern on biblical principles.
This year his name wasn’t even mentioned.
At an American Renewal Project luncheon in a meeting room of Clearview Baptist Church on Tuesday (Sept. 24), Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running for the state’s highest office, was nowhere to be seen. Some 200 church leaders who gathered for a boxed lunch of Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches heard instead from a former governor, the political commentator and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee.
Mired in scandal after a set of disturbing comments he allegedly made on a porn site, Robinson, the North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee, is now talked about only in hushed tones.
But that doesn’t mean he has lost support from his chief promoters and allies: white evangelical church leaders and Republican party loyalists.
Jane and Dwight Frazier pray at an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon in Henderson, N.C., Sept. 24, 2024. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)
“I do not know what’s true and what’s not true,” said Dwight Frazier, a church member at Central Baptist Church in Henderson who attended the luncheon. “Everybody has something that’s wrong in their past and does some things they wouldn’t be proud of. I think he loves the Lord and I think he’s trying to do the right thing. He’s still a good man, in my opinion.”
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Last week, CNN published a damning report alleging that Robinson had posted regularly from 2008-2012 at a porn site called Nude Africa. In those posts he called himself a “Black NAZI,” praised Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” and wrote “(s)lavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves.” The sexual fantasies he posted were so salacious CNN wouldn’t publish some of them.
Robinson denied he made the comments and has insisted on staying in the race, but most of his senior campaign staff members have resigned. The Republican Governors Association took down its pro-Robinson ads.
A fiery speaker, Robinson has spent years cultivating Black and white evangelical church members with a message that aligns closely with their conservative values. Since first winning office as lieutenant governor in 2020, he has defined himself as a culture warrior, decrying “transgenderism and homosexuality” as “filth,” calling for eliminating the state Board of Education and opposing abortion (though he acknowledged that he and his then future wife terminated a pregnancy in 1989).
David Lane and his wife, Cindy, bow their heads during an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon in Henderson, N.C., Sept. 24, 2024. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)
The American Renewal Project’s founder and leader, David Lane, a Dallas political operative, maintained this week that Robinson was a “brilliant” choice to lead the group’s push to get more evangelicals running for office.
Of the 19 pastor luncheons the organization held in 2022, eight were in North Carolina. Robinson was the headline speaker at all the North Carolina events, during which pastors and church leaders laid hands on his back and prayed for him. Robinson was also a headliner in 2021 and 2023, but this year he decided not to participate in the project’s events.
“I don’t know what’s truth and untruth in terms of the allegations against him, but I don’t regret all that we did,” said Lane. “He was fabulous. It’s just that, from a biblical standpoint, Old and New Testament, man is born in sin.”
Instead of Robinson, Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, whose daughter, Sarah, is now governor there, spoke to an overwhelmingly white and older crowd of about 200 church members and Republican Party operatives. Huckabee spoke on the twin issues Robinson liked to invoke, opposition to abortion and trans rights.
“The issue is not how many weeks, it’s personhood, and personhood begins at conception,” Huckabee intoned. He then condemned teenagers asserting a different gender identity: “You’re not in the wrong body, because God put you in the body he gave you.”
Attendees lay hands on and pray for North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, center, during an American Renewal Project pastor luncheon on Oct. 31, 2022, in Jamestown, N.C. (RNS photo/Yonat Shimron)
Also speaking at the luncheon were two American Renewal Project stalwarts, both pastors: Bladen County Commissioner Cameron McGill and North Carolina state Rep. Neal Jackson of Randolph County.
Speaking to a reporter after the event, Jackson, who still serves as pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Bennett, North Carolina, acknowledged that the allegations against Robinson are “serious and deplorable.”
“If they are true, then I am very saddened and greatly, greatly disappointed,” Jackson said. “But I think time will play out and truth will come out.”
In either case, Jackson added, he would not vote for Robinson’s Democratic challenger, Attorney General Josh Stein.
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