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Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Purpose-Driven Politics
Kathleen Parker
It is also un-American.
For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won.
Was it the nuanced, thoughtful Obama, who may have convinced a few more skeptics that he isn't a Muslim? Or was it the direct, confident McCain, who breezes through town hall-style meetings the way Obama sinks three-pointers from the back court.
Suffice it to say, each of the candidates' usual supporters felt validated in their choices. McCain convinced and comforted with characteristic certitude those most at ease with certitude; Obama convinced and comforted with his characteristic intellectual ambivalence those most at ease with ambivalence.
The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state.
The loser was America.
In his enormously successful book, "The Purpose-Driven Life," Warren begins: "It's not about you." Agreed. Nor is this criticism aimed at Christians, evangelicals, other believers or non-believers -- or at Warren, who is a good man with an exemplary record of selfless works. Few have walked the walk with as much determination or success.
This is about higher principles that are compromised every time we pretend we're not applying a religious test when we're really applying a religious test.
It is true that no one was forced to participate in the Saddleback Forum and that both McCain and Obama are free agents. Warren certainly has a right to invite whomever he wishes to his church and to ask them whatever they're willing to answer.
His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?
The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. The Warren Q&A wasn't an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.
What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What's a proper relationship with Jesus? What's next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate dare decline on the basis of mere principle?
Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?
What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must -- and what most Americans personally feel is no one's business -- to win the highest office.
Warren tried to defuse criticism about staging the interviews in his church by saying that though "we" believe in the separation of church and state, "we" don't believe in the separation of faith and politics. Faith, he said, "is just a worldview, and everybody has some kind of worldview. It's important to know what they are."
Presumably "we" refers to Warren's church of fellow evangelicals. And while, yes, everybody has some kind of worldview, it shouldn't be necessary in a pluralistic nation of secular laws to publicly define that view in Christian code.
For the moment, let's set aside our curiosity about what Jesus might do in a given circumstance and wonder what our founding fathers would have done at Saddleback Church. What would have happened to Thomas Jefferson if he had responded as he wrote in 1781:
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Would the crowd at Saddleback have applauded and nodded through that one? Doubtful.
By today's new standard of pulpits in the public square, Jefferson -- the great advocate for religious freedom in America -- would have lost.
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Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kparker@kparker.com
(c) 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
This news arrived on: 08/20/2008
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Posted Comments:
08-25-2008 15:21
Brian wrote:
To Pspaay
I agree totally with your comment on the ACLU and all of the lawsuits. Let's train the ACLU as paratroopers and drop them all into Iraq and see how they would fare there.
08-23-2008 21:22
Pspaay wrote:
To Texas Katie
I disagree with you that Ken was being rude. He was pointing out the fact that Kathleen Parker was not correct in what she wrote even tho most people have been led to believe that is the truth. It is wrong for her, as a journalist, to misinform more people. She should be educated in what she is writing about. Ken was telling her to really read and understand the Constitution before she writes more false information for the public to read. I agree with him.
08-23-2008 02:16
Pspaay wrote:
Thomas Jefferson
Added note:
If you wonder who is behind the ACLU and the lawsuits that are trying to remove Christianity from this country, just answer this question: Which religion doesn't believe that Jesus was the son of God and had him crucified on a cross?
If you wonder who is behind the ACLU and the lawsuits that are trying to remove Christianity from this country, just answer this question: Which religion doesn't believe that Jesus was the son of God and had him crucified on a cross?
08-23-2008 01:52
Pspaay wrote:
Thomas Jefferson
If I am remembering my history right, the letter and quote about seperation between church and state came about because the Danbury church wanted the government to rule that certain religions (like their's) would have jurisdiction over certain areas. That's the way it was when it was ruled by England. Jefferson told them that the government had no right to make such a ruling because government was NOT to interfer in religious matters. Hence the quote about seperation of church and state. NOTHING ANYWHERE says that religion was NOT allowed in politics. I just love the way history and the law have been twisted to suit a few who want to lord it over the many.
08-22-2008 23:23
Pspaay wrote:
To Ken
Thanks for explaining again that there is NO seperation of church and state in the Constitution. The fact that Kathleen Parker puts it in her article as assumed fact, shows how ignorant most people are about our Constitution. The fact that the Supreme Court made several rulings against the free practice of religion on a "quote from a letter" is appalling. Ignorance of Constitutional law is NO EXCUSE. Especially for our Supreme Court!
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