Rising U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee risked his standing with Catholic voters on Sunday by courting his evangelical base at the church of a controversial preacher accused of disparaging Catholics.
There are a few remnants of anti-Catholicism among evangelical Christians in the U.S. South but the two sides have found much common political ground over the past three decades in their strident opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
But the visit to Cornerstone, pastor John Hagee's imposing "mega-church" in the Texas city of San Antonio, was fraught with political perils for Huckabee given his efforts to woo conservative Catholics.
Huckabee, a folksy former Arkansas governor and former Baptist preacher, has had a meteoric rise in opinion polls in recent weeks, largely because he has connected with the Republican Party's influential evangelical wing.
This puts him in serious contention with less than two weeks before the Jan. 3 nomination battle in Iowa, which starts the state-by-state process to pick the Republican and Democratic candidates for November's presidential election.
Religion plays a big role in politics in the United States, where levels of belief and church attendance are much higher than in Europe. Evangelicals number around 60 million in the country of 300 million people, while the Catholic population has been put at close to 70 million.
Taking a break from the Iowa campaign trail, Huckabee delivered a Christmas season sermon at Cornerstone about Christ's birth and embraced Hagee, calling him "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation."
Hagee is a fiery preacher best known for his writings on the Middle East, where he reads contemporary events as unfolding Biblical prophecy. He is staunchly pro-Israel, saying that God had made his love for the land and its people clear.
The Catholic League says Hagee is virulently anti-Catholic -- a charge he denies -- and it is getting the word out that Huckabee is rubbing shoulders with an anti-Vatican figure.
Huckabee's campaign insisted his visit to Hagee's church should in no way be taken as a slight to Catholics.
