Gov. Ron DeSantis tailored his message to an evangelical crowd, describing how he puts on “the full armor of God,” an expression he has used before in front of faith-based audiences.
During remarks at Friday’s Pray, Vote, Stand summit in Washington, D.C., the Florida Governor and 2024 presidential candidate described a “spiritual decline” in this country and how his religious conviction helps him to counter it.
“But across the country, I’m sometimes asked about the role that faith plays in my leadership as Governor. And, you know, I can only tell you from me, and what it’s like being in a high office. I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God when you stand up for what’s right in this day and age.”
“That is not going to be cost free,” DeSantis continued.
“You are going to face blowback, you’re going to face attacks, you’re going to face smears, and it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies against the deceit, against the opposition. It gives you the foundation to know that all the insults, all the nonsense they throw at you ultimately doesn’t matter because you are aiming higher.”
“Some people ask me, how do you become a good leader? Well, one of the first things you need to do is put on the full armor of God,” DeSantis added.
DeSantis has used the phrase before, including at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, at the 2023 Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference, and it was especially potent here in a speech that promised attendees they would “have a seat at the table” under a DeSantis administration determined to “defend religious freedom.”
“It seems at times that there’s nothing sacred anymore and that the virtues we all celebrated even a short time ago are now being tossed aside,” DeSantis said. “I believe that reviving the spirit of America is essential to helping reverse America’s 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.”
The Governor, who often downplays the state’s abortion ban after the sixth week of gestation (a matter still in the courts), got cheers when he mentioned that law he signed, the “Heartbeat Protection Act.”
Though a Catholic, his words hit the evangelical notes, as he described a Judeo-Christian movement “confronted now with threats to religious liberty, the likes we have not seen through most of American history.”
“And there was a time when we were told, you know, religious liberty is just simply if you can go to church for that one hour every Sunday and pray the way you see fit that somehow that is religious freedom,” DeSantis said. “But the minute you try to bring that outside of that Sunday morning context, well, then the elites in our society are going to drop the hammer on that and they basically want you to know their role.”
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