Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) is now disputing Adam Serwer’s suggestion that the presidential explorer may have a “Sharia law problem” with his conservative Republican base because he attempted to increase minority home ownership in Minnesota, including a program that would have made it easier for Muslims to purchase homes. As Serwer’s piece explains, “many Muslims hold that the paying or charging of interest is prohibited, which makes it difficult to purchase a home in the United States.” Banks have begun offering “Sharia compliant” products “which structure the payments in a sort of house-buying layaway plan” and in 2004 — with Pawlenty’s urging to increase minority home ownership — the Minnesota Housing Financing Agency “decided to partner with a local group, the African Development Center, in ‘developing culturally sensitive products,’ that would allow Muslims to enter the market.”

But as Ben Smith reports, Pawlenty is now denying he ever approved the partnership and says he dissolved the program as soon as he heard about it:

“This program was independently set up by the Minnesota state housing agency and did not make any mention Sharia Law on its face, but was later described as accommodating it,” the spokesman, Alex Conant, said. “As soon as Gov. Pawlenty became aware of the issue, he personally ordered it shut it down. Fortunately, only about three people actually used the program before it was terminated at the Governor’s direction.”

Pawlenty’s objection: “The United States should be governed by the U.S. Constitution, not religious laws,” Conant said.

But that’s not what Pawlenty tells Christian audiences in Iowa and New Hampshire, where he’s been using his personal faith (he is an Evangelical Christian) to build support for a presidential bid. In fact, during an interview with Christianity Today in late January, Pawlenty argued that elected officials should apply their faith to government:

I started with the perspective of someone who says that faith is separate from public law and public service; it really isn’t. We have, as a country, a founding perspective that we’re founded under God; our founding documents reference and acknowledge God, and acknowledge that our rights and privileges come from our Creator. [...]

I remind people that our country is founded under God, and the founders thought that was an important perspective.

During a recent address to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, Pawlenty proclaimed, “The Constitution was designed to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith.” He added, “we need to be a coutnry that turns toward God, not a country that turns away from God.”

Gov. Sean Parnell’s (R-AK) nominee to the Alaska Judicial Council says he won’t “let his personal beliefs influence which candidates he’d approve for judgeships,” but given Don Haase’s extreme position that sex outside of marriage should be illegal, his assurances may fall on deaf ears. Parnell says he appointed Haase to the Council — which vets applicants for district, superior, and appellate courts and submits the names to the governor — to fulfill a constitutional requirement of “area representation.” Haase ssured lawmakers that imposing his views on marriage through the council would be “inconvenient.” From the hearing:

SEN. JOE PASKVAN (D): Do you believe it should be a crime?

HAASE: Yeah, I think it’s very harmful to have extramarital affairs. It’s harmful to children, it’s harmful to the spouse who entered a legally binding agreement to marry the person that’s cheating on them.

PASKVAN: What about premarital affairs — should that be a crime?

HAASE: I think that would be up to the voters certainly. If it came before (the state) as a vote, I probably would vote for it … I can see where it would be a matter for the state to be involved with because of the spread of disease and the likelihood that it would cause violence. I can see legitimate reasons to push that as a crime.

But Judiciary Committee Chairman Hollis French (D) was not impressed and “closed the hearing without a vote on Haase’s nomination, saying he wanted to take a ‘deeper look’ at the constitutional requirement” for area representation.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear where Parnell stands on the divorce issue, but he has his own share of very conservative social positions. A big fan of Focus on the Family, Parnell vetoed a $3 million expansion of a public health program for lower-income women and children because less than one percent of the funding could go to cover abortion services. “I want to be able to provide those services. But if your governor doesn’t stand for life and liberty, as he understands it in his conscience, then you don’t have a governor,” Parnell said at the time, apparently oblivious to the fact that the veto denied health services to “1,200 to 1,300 children and 218 pregnant women.” Parnell is also the only governor who has not accepted planning grants to establish a new health care insurance exchange in 2014.

During a debate in 2010, Parnell was asked how old the earth was. He refused to answer, replying simply, “only God knows.” “I really don’t know. I mean, for either one of us to do it, would be quite speculative.” You can watch that exchange here.