Welcome back! br>
On Saturday, August 16, Barack Obama and John McCain will attend a “Civil Forum” at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. The forum will be moderated by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church.
Time Magazine made Rick Warren the subject of a recent cover article. The cover identifies Warren as “America’s most powerful religious leader” (Time Magazine Cover, August 18, 2008 Issue.)
A more cautious figure than Warren might have passed on the opportunity to become a political lightning rod. But he has spent the past few years positioning himself for just such a role as a suprapolitical, supracreedal arbiter of public virtues and religious responsibilities.
…
The payoff is the Aug. 16 event, a kind of coronation for the 54-year-old, jovially hyperactive preacher. “It’s remarkable. The candidates are according him tremendous status,” says William Martin, author of the definitive biography of Billy Graham, A Prophet with Honor. “I don’t see them doing it with an Episcopal bishop or a Cardinal – or another Evangelical.”If Warren is not quite today’s Graham, who presided as “America’s pastor” back when the U.S. affected a kind of Protestant civil religion, he is unquestionably the U.S.’s most influential and highest-profile churchman. The Global Ambition of Rick Warren
The idea of the forum as a “kind of coronation” for Rick Warren raises all kinds of interesting questions about the connections between religion and politics.
What is clear is that Obama and McCain are making a kind of religious pilgrimage to one of America’s evangelical megachurches, to make an appearance before “the U.S.’s most influential and highest-profile churchman.”
What is obvious by now is that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain is an evangelical. This means that both are problematic candidates for a significant number of evangelical Christians. The reason this matters politically is that so many American Christians identify themselves as evangelicals.
“It’s quite an extraordinary thing, it’s the first time a preacher has convened the two presumptive candidates …
They are both fighting for that vote,” said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston.
Evangelicals account for one in four U.S. adults and have become a key conservative base for the Republican Party with a strong focus in the past on opposition to abortion and gay rights and the promotion of “traditional” family values.
Such issues delivered almost 80 percent of the white evangelical Protestant vote to President George W. Bush in 2004 but the movement is more fractured and restless this year though it remains largely in the Republican camp. Obama, McCain Aim For Faith Vote At Forum
So, both Obama and McCain are in the position of having to prove themselves sufficiently evangelical to satisfy evangelical voters, especially on the litmus test issues of abortion and gay marriage.
McCain has not excited conservative evangelicals because of his past support for stem cell research, his blunt criticism of the movement’s leaders in 2000 and other political heresies.
But the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner-of-war has long been opposed to abortion rights, a trump card with this group.
“McCain has a good record on that issue (abortion) and he must show that he will continue it as president,” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative lobby group the Family Research Council, told Reuters. Obama, McCain Aim For Faith Vote At Forum
The most significant point I want to make here is that the “faith” of these two candidates is being defined by their stances on these issues—especially the issue of abortion.
Once again, public discussion of religion has been reduced to a few critical, hot-button issues. Complicated issues of faith, the relationship of religious groups to political power, the role of religious education in public schools, and a multitude of social justice issues get little attention. Instead, religion and faith become defined by a few issues.
It is important to note how Rick Warren has expanded his focus beyond the evangelical hot-button issues since the 2004 presidential election.
During the 2004 presidential election, he seemed to toy with using his new influence to become the next Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. Although he did not officially endorse George W. Bush, the mega-author made no secret of his preference. Two weeks before the election, he sent an e-mail to the several hundred thousand pastors on his mailing list, enumerating “non-negotiable” issues for Christians to consider when casting their votes: abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, euthanasia and human cloning. The Global Ambition of Rick Warren
Since then, Warren has started a global program to mobilize churches in the Third World to deal with poverty, disease, and illiteracy, among other global issues.
And he is both leading and riding the newest wave of change in the Evangelical community: an expansion beyond social conservatism to causes such as battling poverty, opposing torture and combating global warming. The movement has loosened the hold of religious-right leaders on ordinary Evangelicals and created an opportunity for Warren, who has lent his prominent voice to many of the new concerns.
A shift away from “sin issues” – like abortion and gay marriage – is reflected in Warren’s approach to his coming sit-downs with the candidates. He says he is more interested in questions that he feels are “uniting,” such as “poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights,” and still more in civics-class topics like the candidates’ understanding of the role of the Constitution. There will be no “Christian religion test,” Warren insists. “I want what’s good for everybody, not just what’s good for me. Who’s the best for the nation right now?” The Global Ambition of Rick Warren
Yet, despite Warren’s larger vision, for many evangelicals in this election season, “faith” is neatly defined by the “right” answers on a handful of hot-button issues.
So, Barack Obama and John McCain will sit down as Rick Warren—who promises that there will be no “Christian religion test”—will ask Obama and McCain about abortion.
And many Evangelicals have, like Warren, broadened their agenda of concerns to include issues that should favor Obama like global poverty and the environment. But in practice, abortion continues to be a threshold issue for a large number of Evangelical voters.
Warren has already said he will raise the issue with the candidates on Saturday, and Obama could well take advantage of the opportunity.
…
Large numbers of Evangelical and Catholic voters will be listening for Obama to articulate his abortion position in his conversation with Warren. A significant number of them remain undecided in the race, and their votes may hinge on his answer. Obama and McCain’s Test of Faith
When I read the words of Jesus in the four gospels, I wonder how abortion and gay marriage have become the defining issues for evangelicals. As far as I can tell, Jesus had nothing to say about either topic. Does this mean that Jesus would approve of abortion and gay marriage? It only means that they were not mentioned in the gospel narratives. It is hard to make any case on any issue based what someone didn’t say about it.
Although Jesus did not directly address current hot-button issues, he had plenty to say about power, justice, and the poor. My impolite question is: How is that these are not the defining issues for people who base their identity on scripture as the sole authority in faith and practice?
Emphasis on the “sin issues”—as Time magazine calls them—without giving at least equal weight to such central gospel topics as justice, power, and poverty is an example of “selective hermeneutics.”
Exegesis focuses on “what it meant.” Hermeneutics focuses on “what it means.” Selective hermeneutics occurs when people pick and choose portions of the Bible, to decide which parts are relevant and which are not relevant to their lives. This is what has happened with abortion and gay marriage, along with stem cell research and cloning. They have become the defining issues of faith, even though none of them is explicitly mentioned in scripture.
When selective hermeneutics is at work, religion becomes reduced to a small set of issues. This means that politicians find themselves in the position of having to tiptoe carefully on a tightrope between the hot-button issues and their own religious beliefs—whatever they are—to placate potential voters who have reduced ”faith” to a limited set of beliefs on a few defining issues.
“Faith” reduced to these few topics is dramatically diminished biblical faith. We all deserve more than a few carefully chosen responses on a handful of topics to determine how any candidate for public office will address the relationship between religion and political power in a multi-cultural, multi-religious nation.
Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson


Recent Comments