Keyes preaches religious solutions to national problems
By Steve Gravelle
The Gazette
steve.gravelle@gazettecommunications.com
CEDAR RAPIDS — "You're about to experience a Pentecostal service," Pastor Jeff Schmitz told a visitor at the First Pentecostal Church in northeast Cedar Rapids.
Tonight's regular service at the church included a guest sermon from Alan Keyes, reminding the faithful he's again mounting a long-shot bid for the Republican presidential nomination. And while former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee might be the only ordained minister in the race, politically active Christians have another option in Keyes.
Taking the microphone about an hour into the service, Keyes sang and preached for nearly another hour, casting his candidacy as a revival of "the freedom that comes to us through our surrender to the will of God."
According to Keyes, the issues usually cited by more secular candidates in either party can only be solved spiritually.
He blasted "the myth of separation between church and state," compared the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to "the holocaust of abortion" and said even health care can be solved largely through moral discipline.
"We eat too much and exercise too little," said Keyes. "The key to bringing down our health cost is the very thing we've been talking about — the moral responsibility."
Keyes, a former United Nations ambassador and State Department official in the Reagan administration, also mounted presidential bids in 1996 and 2000. The last of his three unsuccessful Senate bids came in 2004, when Keyes, who lives in Maryland, was drafted by Illinois Republicans to face Democratic presidential Barack Obama after the Republican nominee withdrew due to a sex scandal. Keyes polled 27 percent of the vote in that race.
"The question before the nation today is whether America still believes," he said. "If there is no god, we have no liberty."
Keyes declared himself a candidate in mid-September, when most of his rivals had been campaigning for at least a year. But he said more than a political office is at stake.
"If we can turn this nation back to (Christian belief), we can bring the nation home," he said.
Keyes did not make a specific appeal for support in Thursday's precinct caucuses, but Schmitz urged the congregation to participate.
"You need to get involved in taking back this country," Schmitz said after Keyes' sermon.
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