Barack Obama\u2019s invitation to evangelical powerhouse Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation has angered abortion and gay rights advocates. They are overreacting. The invitation merely confirms Obama\u2019s admirable willingness to reach out across a relatively broad ideological spectrum .<\/p>\n
Too bad Rick Warren isn\u2019t so open-minded. After his over-hyped and intrusive interviews of Obama and John McCain this last August, the best-selling author of A Purpose-Driven Life disclosed to his congregation at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Ca., the one kind of person he couldn\u2019t vote for. \u201cI could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, \u2018I don\u2019t need God,\u2019\u201d Warren preached, according to the Los Angeles Times. \u201cThey\u2019re saying, \u2018I\u2019m totally self-sufficient by [myself].\u2019 And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It\u2019s too big a job.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to decide which is more laughable: Warren\u2019s conception of the presidency or of atheists. Unfortunately, both conceptions are widespread among Americans.<\/p>\n
Warren would apparently feel more secure if a president said: \u201cAfter consulting God, I have decided to bomb Iran,\u201d than if he said, \u201cAfter consulting my advisors, all available intelligence, and our allies, I have decided to bomb Iran.\u201d A Warren defender would likely say that the two statements boil down to the same thing. But if consulting God merely ratifies what a president learns from his human sources, then the consultation is a meaningless superfluity.<\/p>\n
No, a properly religious President, in Warren\u2019s view, is presumably prepared to change his merely human-derived knowledge based on what God whispers in his ear. If he is not prepared to revise his conclusions, then his decision-making is no different from that of an atheist.<\/p>\n
So why would Warren be so confident that God has spoken to the president and that the president has properly interpreted the message?<\/p>\n
If the president of Iran said: \u201cAfter consulting God, I have decided to bomb the United States,\u201d Warren (and most other Americans) would presumably be utterly certain that the Iranian president had not been taken into God\u2019s confidence. But why? Perhaps Warren is naively ethnocentric. God, in this view, would either never answer a Muslim\u2019s prayers, or would do so only in ways that protect America. But we know that God does not always protect America from attack.<\/p>\n
Why is Warren any more confident that when a U.S. president says: \u201cAfter heartfelt prayer, I have decided that Detroit needs a federal bail-out,\u201d he has actually been given such divine advice? And if a citizen cannot know whether God in fact did convey the proper course of action in any given case, how is the public better off with a president who calls on such an erratic White House advisor?<\/p>\n
Moreover, the task of persuading the prayer-inspired president that he is wrong about the wisdom of federal intervention in the auto industry, say, seems unduly daunting to me. If a president made the decision purely on worldly grounds, those grounds can in theory be countered with other evidence. Obviously, not everyone is open to contrary evidence. The ideal of rational decision-making is only imperfectly realized in practice. But I at least know the type of arguments I would make. I don\u2019t know how you counter revelation, however. God is a political conversation-stopper, a trump card that constricts political discourse rather than widen it out.<\/p>\n
But let\u2019s give Warren the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he merely means: A president should possess humility, an awareness of his own fallibility and the limits of his own and others\u2019 knowledge. I could not agree more. And the unreligious can be more obstinate and close-minded than many a devout believer. But on balance the sense that God can help you out with your presidential responsibilities seems to me to be less conducive to humility than an awareness that human knowledge\u2014provisional, fallible, constantly subject to revision\u2014 is all you\u2019ve got to go on.<\/p>\n
Pace<\/em> Warren, only a megalomaniac in the White House would say: \u201cI\u2019m totally self-sufficient by [myself].\u201d A non-believer president would seek out the same wide range of assistance as a believer president. And if his human advisors give him lousy advice, he can throw them out and get a better set.\u00a0 If they have lied or betrayed their office, they can be subpoenaed.\u00a0 Neither option is available, unfortunately, with God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barack Obama\u2019s invitation to evangelical powerhouse Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation has angered abortion and gay rights advocates. They are overreacting. The invitation merely confirms Obama\u2019s admirable willingness to reach out across a relatively broad ideological spectrum . … Continue reading