Less than a month before the presidential primary season begins with the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is set to announce a campaign advisory board focused on religious liberty issues.

Rubio’s campaign tapped a handful of well-known evangelicals for the volunteer board, including pastor Rick Warren, theologian Wayne Grudem, Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and Thomas Kidd, an author and professor of history at Baylor University (Kidd also occasionally writes for WORLD).

Eric Teetsel, director of faith outreach for Rubio’s campaign, said membership on the board doesn’t equal an endorsement of the GOP candidate, and the members could advise other campaigns if they wanted.

Warren told me he doesn’t endorse candidates. Grudem said he hasn’t been asked to endorse Rubio “but would be willing to endorse him if asked, while being clear I’m speaking as an individual, not a representative of any institution.”

Grudem called Rubio a reliable conservative and “a winsome, likable candidate who has the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, in my view.”

Teetsel said the board would advise the campaign on a range of issues, including persecuted Christians in the Middle East, legal concerns about the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and religious liberty for those opposed to same-sex marriage.

He added Rubio is concerned about protecting liberty for people of all religious backgrounds, and the advisory board includes a Jewish rabbi (see the complete list at the end of this article).

Read the article “Ballot Boxing: Rubio Gets New Religious Advisers” on worldmag.com.