Perry Proves He Won't Shy Away From His Faith

Rick Perry's speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University today made one thing clear about the Texas governor: He will "not shy away from cloaking his candidacy in his Christianity," writes Philip Rucker in the Washington Post. In fact, he "presented his life in deeply spiritual terms and cast his political aspirations as destiny." It's no secret that Perry's faith plays a big role in his life, but until today he had focused more on jobs than God on the presidential campaign trail.

Perry spoke comfortably about how he spent his 20s "wondering what to do with this one life among the billions that were on the planet,” adding that he had been "lost" while serving as an Air Force pilot before finding God. “It’s like he had somebody like Rick Warren helping him write,” the director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center tells the Post. “The Purpose Driven Life is about how there’s a plan for everybody. That’s what Perry’s trying to say, that God has a plan for him, and it’s a really big one—to be the next president of the United States." (More Rick Perry 2012 stories.)