Written by Chuck Baldwin | 30 January 2012

Last weekend, Republican voters in South Carolina picked the candidate they want to be the GOP standard bearer for the November elections: Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich? Really? What did I miss? Or better, what did Republican voters in South Carolina miss?

What is not lost to virtually everyone who understands national politics is the fact that there is perhaps no State in the union where evangelical Christians have more influence within the State Republican Party than in South Carolina. For example, Greenville, South Carolina, is home to what could be regarded as the flagship university of evangelicalism, Bob Jones University. There are probably more evangelical churches, Christian schools, mission organizations, etc., per square mile in South Carolina than any State in the country. And the vast majority of them are politically active in GOP politics. So, when a GOP Presidential candidate wins South Carolina, you can be absolutely certain that he or she did so with the support and blessing from a sizeable number of evangelical Christians (and pastors) in the State.

In all candor, understanding the power and influence of evangelical Christianity in South Carolina Republican politics, Newt Gingrich’s victory in that State last week is extremely difficult for this writer to digest. I cannot think of a candidate that is more reprehensible to the values and principles that born-again Christians claim to embrace than Newt Gingrich!

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