That Old-Time Religion

My introduction to the Southern Baptist Convention’s stealth church and Bible Belt politics

Photo by NATHAN MULLET on Unsplash

---

I haven’t visited my home state of Arkansas in more than a decade, but the days I spent in that ecosystem are the foundation for how I see the world. More than anything, that time in the complex culture of the Bible Belt informs how I view politics.

In college, I only bothered to vote in presidential elections and not much else. That all changed in the early eighties when I went to work for a Little Rock investment bank. While my first finance job was at a sketchy shop straight out of the movie Boiler Room, this company was on a different level. The firm was already over fifty years old when they hired me.

The two brothers who led the business were extraordinary deal-makers. Billionaires at a time when that status was rare, the two elderly siblings were as different as night and day. One brother was educated at Annapolis alongside Jimmy Carter, and the other never even finished high school.

---

---

It was impossible to ignore politics while working for this company. Once, our department was called into an impromptu meeting. The agenda was to discuss a new political vehicle known as a political action committee, or a PAC.

The person who led the meeting explained that the PAC could contribute money to judicial campaigns and state legislators. In return, politicians who got money from our PAC would “do what we want them to do.” It was strongly suggested that each of us contribute a portion of our paychecks to the PAC.

Before that meeting, I’d never heard of a PAC, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. So I contributed a few hundred dollars to the company PAC every month. I never bothered to ask what the company did with the money they collected.

By the mid-nineties, I was working my butt off to get my startup investment bank off the ground. I believed ten years at the largest off-Wall Street investment bank prepared me for entrepreneurship, but it took a lot more work than I anticipated.

At my old job, my clients were outside of the state, so I spent my first days as an entrepreneur networking with state and local politicians, hoping to get some of Arkansas’s investment business. That’s how I met Mike Huckabee.

The other politician from Hope, Arkansas

When I first met Huckabee, the state’s future governor was the newly-elected Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas. After Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992, Jim Guy Tucker, Huckabee’s predecessor, became governor once Clinton resigned.

The following year, Asa Hutchinson, then the head of the state’s Republican Party, talked the Baptist preacher from Hope, Arkansas (also Clinton’s hometown) into running for Tucker’s open seat the following year. In 1992, Huckabee unsuccessfully campaigned against Dale Bumpers, the incumbent Democratic senator.

After his loss, Huckabee hired former Clinton advisor Dick Morris to recalibrate his messaging. Next, Huckabee cut ties with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a racist organization that grew out of the White Citizens Counsels of the Jim Crow era.

With Morris’s help, Huckabee recast himself as a moderate-damn-near-progressive Republican. He narrowly beat his Democratic opponent, becoming only the second Republican lieutenant governor in Arkansas since Reconstruction. He began his term as the only Republican in an otherwise Democratic statehouse. I suspect that is the reason it was easy for me to get a meeting with him.

Before our meeting, I wasn't sure what Huckabee even looked like. When I entered his office, I was greeted by an overweight man wearing a dark, ill-fitting suit. Although he was friendly, Huckabee seemed uncomfortable, almost nervous. I couldn’t help but notice he chewed his fingernails right down to the cuticles.

His office, which was not air-conditioned, was so small I had to move my chair to close the office door. The meeting began with the usual small talk. In the end, Huckabee told me that although he wanted to assist me, as a Republican lieutenant governor in a Democratic state, he couldn’t do much to help my business.

As we wrapped up our conversation, Huckabee said something I’ve never forgotten. Lamenting his spartan office accommodations, he locked eyes with me as if to impart a profound insight. Then he said, “Now I know what it feels like to be a minority.”

Over the next few years, things got a lot better for Huckabee. He won reelection as lieutenant governor in 1996 and looked like a shoo-in to fill retiring Dale Bumpers’s vacant senate seat. Then things got crazy.

Jim Guy Tucker, who became governor when Bill Clinton left the office for the White House, managed to get swept up in the Whitewater investigation. Long story short, a jury convicted Tucker of multiple felonies, leading to his resignation as governor.

As Lieutenant Governor, Huckabee assumed the governorship to finish out Tucker’s term. And just like that, Mike Huckabee became only the third Republican governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction.

How I accidentally joined a Southern Baptist Church

The next time I ran into Huckabee was at a new church that opened across town. The church billed itself as nondenominational, intent on appealing to a younger congregation. The church was located in a large warehouse fitted with offices, rooms for bible study, and a sanctuary.

We aren’t super religious, but my wife and I decided to visit this church. By coincidence, the church’s choir was led by a man I recognized from my days in Pine Bluff, where we sang together in the high school choir (yes, I can carry a tune). The choir performed a variety of Christian rock tunes and was accompanied by a small band. The band’s bass guitar player? Governor Mike Huckabee.

Immediately after the service, my former classmate approached me about joining the choir. A few weeks later, I was singing Christian rock solos in the church choir while Mike Huckabee played bass.

Some of my friends thought I would benefit from being in the same church choir as the governor. They were sure he’d remember how I sought him out when he was a political nobody. That isn't what happened.

Huckabee didn’t seem to recall me or our meeting. When I joined the choir, it was as though he’d never seen me before. I knew politicians met lots of people, so that didn’t bother me.

Then I got a surprise from the governor. He had appointed another choir member and me to state boards. I was disappointed to learn that the other choir member’s appointment was paid, and mine was not, but I was honored. A few weeks later, Governor Huckabee swore me in at the state capitol (I still have the photo of the ceremony. I’m embarrassed to say I’m wearing lizard cowboy boots).

Soon after the ceremony, I got a call at my office about my board appointment. It was from the governor’s ethics people. They wanted to let me know that since I was a state board member, my investment company could no longer do business with the state of Arkansas. Instead of Huckabee helping me get business from the state of Arkansas, ultimately, he did just the opposite.

For a while, my wife and I enjoyed attending our new church. There were many people our age there, and while it wasn’t as diverse as we might have hoped, other biracial couples were members.

After a while, we noticed something about our new church was a little off. It was supposed to be nondenominational, but as time passed, that seemed to change. Then a few things happened that made us decide this church wasn’t the place for us.

The first was the Sunday the church pastor introduced a “special guest” to preach the sermon. The guest turned out to be a man in the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention. From the way he talked, our church wasn’t nondenominational at all. It was a Southern Baptist church.

What about the church’s nondenominational format? After that Sunday, it just faded away. The whole thing felt like a bait-and-switch scheme. Like one of those meetings, you go to only to discover that they want you to sell Amway.

Also, there was the Southern Baptist Convention’s history of racism. You couldn't be a Black person in the South and not know this history. But around that time, the organization issued what amounted to an apology for the organization’s racist past. So we thought maybe we should give it a chance.

Then a second thing happened a few weeks later. My wife and I were sitting in the church's lobby when two senior church members walked by us. The two women were so deep in conversation, they didn't even notice the two of us. I guess that’s why one of them felt comfortable saying, “All Democrats are going to Hell.”

That was our last time attending that church, but almost thirty years later, they’re doing just fine. Instead of a warehouse, now the church has a fancy campus. According to their website, they’ve grown from fifty or so members when we were there to more than four thousand.

Mike Huckabee is no longer the overweight political who bit his fingernails. Now he’s a multimillionaire television host. He even ran for president a few times. And what about that board he appointed me to, the one that kept me from doing business in my home state?

Well, when my wife and I left Arkansas for Manhattan in late 2000, that board had never held a meeting. Not a single one.

Please consider signing up as a paid subscriber. You’ll receive early access to all my posts and early access to podcasts. You’ll also get invited to occasional Zoom events and paid-subscriber-only chats.

---