{"id":19004,"date":"2023-09-29T11:46:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-29T15:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=19004"},"modified":"2023-09-29T11:46:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T15:46:00","slug":"ron-desantis-believes-you-cant-be-a-leader-without-faith-in-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2023\/09\/ron-desantis-believes-you-cant-be-a-leader-without-faith-in-god","title":{"rendered":"Ron DeSantis Believes You Can&#8217;t Be a Leader Without Faith in God"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_19013\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-19013\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/09\/ron-desantis-credit-the-old-major-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-19013\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2023\/09\/ron-desantis-credit-the-old-major-shutterstock-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"ron desantis\" width=\"768\" height=\"576\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-19013\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Old Major\/Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis emphasized the critical role faith in God plays in leadership as he detailed how he\u2019ll advance the cause of religious liberty if he becomes the 47th president of the United States. DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, recently addressed the crowd at the Family Research Council\u2019s Pray, Vote, Stand Summit, where he discussed his faith in God and detailed how he\u2019ll protect religious liberty if elected president.<\/p>\n<p>He said, \u201cI don\u2019t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God. When you stand up for what\u2019s right in this day and age, that is not going to be cost-free. You are going to face blowback, you\u2019re going to face attacks, you\u2019re going to face smears. And it\u2019s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis credited his faith in God with giving him \u201cthe foundation to know that all the insults, all the nonsense they throw at you ultimately doesn\u2019t matter because you are aiming higher.\u201d After sharing concerns about the current state of affairs in the U.S., DeSantis complained that \u201cwe do have a spiritual decline in this country.\u201d He cited the practice of \u201cforcibly closing churches and denying people their right to worship as they see fit\u201d during the COVID-19 lockdowns as one example. He recalled, \u201cThe liquor stores were open, the strip clubs were open, but yet they shut the door on the people of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hY-sxjR5oS0?si=c2p0w2FxzxcxcRlL\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He declared, \u201cI believe that reviving the spirit of America is essential to helping reverse America\u2019s decline. And this revival is going to begin in our religious institutions, our places of work, each of our households, all the institutions that make up the bedrock of society.\u201d DeSantis warned of \u201cthreats to religious liberty the likes we have not seen throughout most of American history\u201d and highlighted the need for \u201cpeople to be able to live their faith in all aspects of their life\u201d as \u201cfaith has been treated as secondary to secular concerns in culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He added, \u201cAttempts have been made to wipe our Judeo-Christian religious symbols from our national heritage and national culture. The Left, you know, they talk about saying you can\u2019t be involved in religious practice if you\u2019re in government because it would represent [an]\u00a0<strong>\u2018<\/strong>establishment of religion.\u2019\u201d\u00a0DeSantis refuted this argument, saying, \u201cFirst of all, that\u2019s not true. But second of all, they\u2019re the ones who want to establish a religion. They just don\u2019t want to establish traditional religions. They want political leftism to be the established religion of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis repeatedly discussed his record as Florida governor in his remarks and concluded his speech by describing his state as \u201cthe place where woke goes to die.\u201d He told the audience, \u201cAs president, we are going to leave the woke mind virus in the dustbin of history, where it belongs, once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis emphasized the critical role faith in God plays in leadership as he detailed how he\u2019ll advance the cause of religious liberty if he becomes the 47th president of the United States. DeSantis, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, recently addressed the crowd at the Family Research Council\u2019s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":19013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2444,32,4,2093,5],"tags":[3665,2286,3597],"class_list":["post-19004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-christian","category-faith","category-family-research-council","category-politics","tag-faith-in-god","tag-family-research-council","tag-ron-desantis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ron DeSantis Believes You Can&#039;t Be a Leader Without Faith in God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ron DeSantis shared the critical role faith in 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