INDIANAPOLIS (RNS) — Former Vice President Mike Pence addressed Southern Baptists at a luncheon event focused on public service where he criticized President Joe Biden, questioned the future of the Republican Party and upheld faith as the answer for the country’s problems.
He spoke during a Tuesday (June 11) luncheon held at a hotel across the street from the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention with Brent Leatherwood, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
After trumpeting his role in the Trump administration’s appointment of justices who “sent Roe versus Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence made it clear that he has found nothing to appreciate about the current presidency.
“The influential men and women in this room need to know there’s also a very healthy debate within my party about whether we’re going to stay on the course of a strong national defense of American leadership in the world, of limited government and balanced budgets, traditional moral values, the right to life and an affirmation of religious liberty and marriage,” he said, “or whether we’re going to start to move in another direction.”
One of those divides, he said, is future legislation about abortion at every level of U.S. political life.
“I honestly think we haven’t come to the end of the debate over life: We’ve come to the end of the beginning,” Pence said. “I think the destiny of this nation is inextricably linked to whether we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.”
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