Former governor of Arkansas and past presidential candidate Mike Huckabee faced some tough questions about his views of Mormonism at his Senate confirmation. Huckabee has been tapped as President Trump’s ambassador to Israel and was thoroughly questioned on his views of the Middle East and the US’s relationship with Israel. Senator John Curtis of Utah, spoke of the six months he spent in Israel as a student of Brigham Young University. “I like to tease my friends with ties to Israel that until I was 18, I thought I grew up in Zion in Utah. We have Zion Park, we have a Jordan River. There’s lots of ties. One of those ties is Brigham Young University, sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), that has a campus there.”

Curtis then asked Huckabee to clarify his views on the LDS church. In 2007, when Huckabee was running against Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, Huckabee made comments about the Mormon church that were interpreted as attacking his faith. During an interview with The Times, Huckabee was asked about Romney’s Mormon faith and whether he believed Mormonism is a cult or a religion. Huckabee, who is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, responded that he believed it is a religion but that he didn’t know much about it. “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” he asked at the time. Romney responded that “attacking someone’s religion is really going too far.” Huckabee would later apologize for the comment.

Responding to the question from Senator Curtis, Huckabee spoke on the “respect” he had for the Mormon faith. “The respect that I have for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extraordinary, because I respect very much the commitment to family, to moral righteousness, to a sense of right and wrong. It’s part of what has drawn me to an understanding that Israel, in many ways, is a reflection of our own heritage and history,” he said. He described the US and Western Civilization as under Judeo-Christian law, something that binds the US with the country of Israel. “The spiritual connections between your church, mine, many churches in America, Jewish congregations, to the state of Israel is because we ultimately are people of the book. We believe the Bible, and therefore that connection is not geopolitical. It is also spiritual. And to ignore that, to deny that, would make it very difficult for us to ever understand how to go forward in a relationship with them,” he said. Curtis stated he was appreciative of the comment.

The issue of Mormonism is part of the Christian faith or a cult has been in the cultural discussion for some time, with some criticizing The Chosen for a supposed reference to The Book of Mormon. Others have made the same assertion that Huckabee has made, with Mormon Apostle Joseph F. Merril saying in the LDS Conference Reports, “Now there is another personality of which I desire to speak, one that the world calls by a name, but in whose reality as a personal Being it does not believe and that person is Satan, the Devil. But according to our understanding and teaching. Satan is a person with a spirit body, in form like that of all other men. He is a spirit brother of ours and of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Elder Brother in the spirit world.” Huckabee’s nomination was approved by the committee and will head to the full Senate.