I was reading a post on NBC.com about Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. According to reports, there is a 90% chance he will seek the Republican nomination for President. Of course, this doesn’t mean he will win the Republican nomination and if he does that he will win the American presidency in elections scheduled for 2016.

But he is definitely a Christian and the NBC article focused on some statements Cruz recently made at a Value Voters Summit in Washington D.C. Throughout his career, Cruz has been forthright about his Christian faith.

In a rare move, Cruz spoke about his troubled life because of the alcoholic lifestyle of both his parents. In his speech, Ted said that faith in Christ rescued his family.

When he was three years old, his father abandoned the family. Cruz said:

“My parents drank far too much. Both of them had serious problems with alcohol. And when I was 3 years old, my father decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. And he didn’t want a 3-year-old son. So he got on a plane and left.”

But that all changed when Cruz’s father accepted Christ:

“He gave his life to Jesus.” Cruz said. “And he went and bought an airplane ticket and flew back to Calgary to rejoin my mother and to rejoin his son. So when anyone asks is faith real, is a relationship with Jesus real, I can tell you if it were not for my father giving his life to Christ, I would have been raised by a single mother.”

What also caught my attention is that when Cruz’s father became a Christian, he flew back to Calgary, Alberta, Canada to rejoin the family.

Though American, Ted Cruz was actually born in Calgary on December 22, 1970, where his parents Rafael and Eleanor Cruz lived and worked. Though both were American, they owned a seismic-data processing firm for oil drillers and were working in the Calgary oil patch. The family returned to Houston in 1974 due to collapsing oil prices.

The only thing Cruz remembers about his brief time in Calgary is that “it was cold.”

Cruz’s father Rafael, who was born in Cuba, is now a fairly well-known Christian pastor. When Rafael was 14, he fought for Castro during the Cuban revolution. However, when he finally realized who Castro really was, Rafael began to publicly criticize Castro and in 1957 fled the country to the US. Today Rafael occasionally joins his son at political rallies.

Who is Ted Cruz?

After returning to Houston in 1974, Ted Cruz attended Christian schools graduating from Second Baptist High School in 1988. During his high school years, he became involved in the Free Market Education Foundation, where Cruz studied theories proposed by the such free market thinkers as Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises. Ted went on to university where he eventually graduated with a law degree from Harvard in 1995.

An article in the Washington Post cites a statement made by professor Alan Dershowitz about Cruz’s time at Harvard. Dershowitz described Cruz as “off-the-charts brilliant.

After graduation, Cruz worked several years in the legal profession. In 2003, Ted was appointed as the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas History. Cruz was also the youngest solicitor general ever appointed in the US.  According to the Washington Post, one of the many high-profile cases Cruz became involved in included, “defending the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds.”

A Republican, with Tea Party leanings, Cruz was elected to the US senate in 2012, in what the Washington Post described as “the biggest upset of 2012… A true grassroots victory against very long odds.” He is one of three Latinos serving in the Senate.

According to reports, Cruz opposes abortion unless it endangers the mother’s life. He is also against same-sex marriage, but believes the final decision on its legalization rests with the individual state.

Sources say Cruz will officially announce he is seeking the Republican nomination for the US presidency before the end of of the year.

 

Read more:

• Ted Cruz Opens Up About Troubled Early Life: NBC
• Who is Ted Cruz? Washington Post
• Ted Cruz is prepping a Foreign Policy-focused Presidential campaign: The National Journal