The Importance of Obama and McCain at Saddleback Church This Weekend

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/14/weekend-preview-obama-and-mccain-at-saddleback-church.aspx

The Importance of Obama and McCain at Saddleback Church This Weekend

With Obama and McCain slated to appear together this Saturday at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, we asked TNR contributing editor Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, to weigh in on the significance of the event and Warren's broader role in evangelical politics:

snip...

The important question is not what Warren believes, but what he does. Of all the things he does, the most important is severing a link between conservative religion and conservative politics. Even as recently as the Jimmy Carter presidency, evangelicals put God before party. But starting with the Reagan years, they increasingly reversed their priorities. Jesus no longer saved; Ronald Reagan and George Bush did. Our sins were no longer a matter between us and our God, but involved us and our State. Transgression was criminalized. Courts and politicians judged us, not a Supreme Being.

All of this was an odd step for religious believers to take. If matters of the spirit are eternal and transcendent, why would you conflate your faith in Jesus with your allegiance to James Dobson? The Christian right was more right than Christian. Its poisonous influence on American politics is well-documented. But it also had negative consequences for American religion. Faith is, and ought to be, about more than your position on late-term abortions.

If Rick Warren is successful in linking both political parties with his church, he will pave the way to a situation in which churches will no longer be identified with any political party. Then and only then will evangelical Protestantism become the moral and spiritual force it ought to be, urging its members to manifest their compassion, reminding them of their inclination to sin, and helping them find ways to reconcile their conviction that their God is the one and true Lord with those who adhere to other faiths or none at all.

The joint appearance of McCain and Obama at Saddleback is only one event in a long political campaign. But it is also a significant antidote to the poison that the religious right injected into American politics. The United States is unlikely ever to be as secular as Western Europe. If a better balance between religion and politics is to come about, it will because of what religious leaders do, and not because of what non-believers such as myself want to happen.

I'm looking forward to watching this tomorrow night.

:thumbsup:

Or allowing the other party to paint us that way will continue to lead to failure.

oh please oh please oh please!!!

That ought to be good for some fireworks from McAdulterer.

:popcorn:

:rofl:

;)

I will be attending and will be a bit concerned. Warren sent out an email on the eve of the 04 elections pushing for a Bush vote, thus my trepidation. If he is even remotely fair in the questioning McCain will not likely come out of this without losing some ground.