Just about the time my recent commentary on “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg was appearing (“Pete Buttigieg: Lecturing America one Christian at a time”), a very interesting thing happened. Buttigieg’s brother-in-law, an evangelical Christian pastor, also spoke out, even calling on the presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to “repent” for trying to use the Bible to justify late-term abortion.

Rhyan Glezman, the older brother of the man to whom Buttigieg is married, Chasten Glezman, felt that he just couldn’t stand by and watch as Buttigieg gave credence to the idea that, according to the Bible, life starts with the first breath. “I feel a sense of responsibility to my faith to stand up and say something, to say, ‘No that’s not true,’” he said Friday morning on the radio show The Breakfast Club. “God places a very high value on all human life. Everyone is created fearfully and wonderfully in the image of God, with intrinsic value. That doesn’t start with the first breath; it starts when we enter our mother’s womb.”

A False Teaching

Glezman acknowledged that parts of the Bible do speak of life in terms of breath. And considering the complexity of the question of when life begins, he had some criticism of Republicans for the way “they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion,” when it’s “obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.” (I assume by “one piece of doctrine” he meant the belief that life begins at the moment of conception.)

At the same time, he said, the political doctrine pushed by every one of the Democratic presidential candidates dictates that abortion any time right up through birth is the absolute right of every woman. Using the Bible to defend that or to suggest that it is what God wants is a false teaching.

“When I look at every single one of them,” he said of the candidates, “their policies, their beliefs, it’s very anti-American. It’s very anti-life. It’s very anti-God. They all have the same rhetoric, and that’s the path they’re deciding to go down. You see it right down the board. I don’t know why a Democrat can’t come out and say, ‘I believe life in the womb is valuable.’”

Do you get the impression that the wrong member of this family got into politics?

Using Christian Terminology to Sell Ungodly Leftist Positions

“Mayor Pete” may not have done much for the city of South Bend, but he’s touted as having the gift of “narrative.” This is the enviable if not always admirable ability to craft a political message and communicate it. This is what he’s trying to do, Glezman believes, with his use of Christian terminology to defend his leftist policies. He’s walking a line to try to appeal to the evangelical community while also falling into line with Democrat dogma.

I would say this is a hopeless task, and that his approach is already wearing thin. The message won’t play, because every time he tries to use God to justify abortion on demand, evangelicals will see the word HYPOCRITE tattooed across his forehead. “I think he’s just going along with the agenda of the Democratic party,” Glezman said. “That if you want to be a Democrat, you have to be pro-choice.” 

Glezman points to Buttigieg as “indicative of a growing trend within the Democratic Party to silence dissent with all the fervor of a religion.” In other words, we’re supposed to fall in line and endorse their interpretation of Scripture. If we don’t celebrate their views on gay marriage or abortion on demand, we are condemned as homophobic bigots or anti-woman, he says, when we are not. As Christians, we love all people. “You can love people and have a disagreement,” he said.

A Modern-Day Pharisee

He tweeted this last Friday: “Bad theology often leads to bad morality and that is what you see with Pete. He is a modern-day pharisee inventing new laws and regulations and in his opinion we must abide to his standards to have our faith confirmed.”

As reported by The Washington Examiner, Glezman said his brother-in-law had “manipulated” and “weaponized” the Bible to appeal to a wider demographic of liberal Democrats, which makes him “a false teacher,” as far as he’s concerned. But, hey, to the Democrats, it’s just politics — even though human lives are at stake, the very existence of real human beings.

Not surprisingly, the hostile rift over politics we see in America is exemplified in his own family, which must surely be dreading a very uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner (or the sad prospect of having to beg off). Glezman says his relationships with his family are “very broken” and they’ve only “gone downhill” since he became a born-again Christian. He and his brother Chasten don’t speak at all now. At the same time, he describes the relationship he has with Buttigieg as “cordial” and says that Pete has “treated me fairly; he’s been nice to me.”

But Glezman absolutely nails it when he sums up the problem with Buttigieg: Offering your own opinion is very different from outright claiming that God supports such atrocities as late-term abortion. “Anyone who makes those claims, anyone who’s going to weaponize the [Bible] in that way, I would say to anyone that you need to repent. This is leading people astray and it’s very, very dangerous.”

The full story is a must-read. Thank you, Mr. Glezman, for speaking up. It takes courage to speak out about the left, knowing that the way they operate is to intimidate or discredit all heretics, but I hope we haven’t heard the last from you. You are the one who knows how to deliver a message.

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.