Barack Obama needed to speak out years ago, not resign now. Leaving now is just a sad example of politics as usual from a candidate who promises change, and that is truly disappointing. The issue is not leaving the church now, which if he believes in its teachings, he ought not to do. Nor is it accepting the tired canard that membership within any community implies agreement with all of its teachings. That is simply a path to creating homogenous communities of spiritual/intellectual automatons.

But it is fair to ask Obama, especially in the context of a spiritual community so proud of a prophetic voice which speaks truth to power, how come he never took the initiative to speak out against those words and deeds with which he disagreed, when he was a member of Trinity Church? Had he done so, he might have modeled the kind of loving critique which is so absent from contemporary discourse, especially when it comes to religion.

Continue »

The questions I would ask of both presidential candidates, were I with them Saturday evening at Saddleback Church, or at any other time, are as follows:

1. What traits or abilities does your adversary possess which you would do well to emulate? How would your presidency reflect your growth in that direction?

2. In what policy areas could your party learn from the opposition? How will you effectively integrate that learning into the policies of your administration?

3. Each of you has declared yourselves as Christians. What teaching of Jesus, or other biblical passage, would you bear in mind as you began each day in the Oval office, and why?

4. As you look down the road four and a half years from now, what one accomplishment, in your own mind, would mark your presidency as a success?

Right on, Rick Warren! Now let's hope he means it. But whether or not we trust his intentions, we can all learn from his words. The separation of church and state is one of the great ideas of the modern world. It attempted to end the thousands year old tradition, among all three Abrahamic faiths at least, of people using state power to kill other people in order to make God happy. But the idea that faith should be separated from politics is one of the worst expressions of "baby-out-with-the-bathwater" thinking that has come along in almost as many years. Instead of killing people for God, we tried to kill God for people, only that has worked so well either.

Continue »