I watched enough of the Obama-McCain confab with Rick Warren last Saturday night to develop at least two observations.
You can read a full transcript here.
My first thought is that a significant segment of the American public has a rather unhealthy obsession with the religious views of presidential candidates in spite of the fact that the framers wrote a "no religious test" clause into our constitution.
I've always appreciated that clause, even though we've never done a good job living up to it.
The framers certainly seem to have understood that the quickest was to disqualify an otherwise capable decision-maker from office was to subject him/her to a spiritual litmus test.
This topic actually came up in my Washington Center small group meeting earlier this week when one of my international students asked me why Americans talked about religion so much during elections. For most of them, this was a very odd topic to focus so much attention on during a presidential campaign.
In light of the religious test clause, I suggested that there were any number of "unofficial" qualifications we use for candidates and religious faith is just one of them.
The second observation is that Barack Obama should get points for just showing up to visit with Rick Warren and his minions at Saddleback Church. It appeared to me that it was a McCain-friendly audience and that Obama's answers were a little too brainy and reflective for a largely knee-jerk, conservative audience.
And while Pastor Warren has received high marks for this event, I'm not really sure it helps most voters all that much when candidates are interrogated for an hour about about something as personal as their faith or their prayer life.
Moreover, what's going to happen if some other best-selling evangelical minister decides that he wants to conduct an interview with Obama/McCain in the next few weeks? I'd like to think that both campaigns will have enough sense to say "No thanks, we think we've had enough of this..."
Maybe you have some better thoughts than I do.
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