Last week's presidential forum between Barack Obama and John McCain, hosted by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and bestselling author, offered the good and the bad about our current political discourse.
The good was in its groundbreaking nature. The evangelical Christian movement has been largely white, largely conservative, largely Republican and largely linear in its theological perspective. Moreover, the traditional, wedge issues like abortion and same-gender marriage were mentioned but not the dominant themes of the evening.
It would have been hard, if not impossible to imagine the late Jerry Falwell putting on a similar event at his Thomas Road Baptist Church, and even less likely that a Democratic presidential candidate would have accepted the invitation.
Warren is to be commended for his ability and willingness to put on a forum of this nature that was not saturated in partisanship. In doing so, he is obviously seeking to offer a different public face for evangelicals.
The bad, was too much of the C-word and not enough of the C-word. In short, the forum spent too much time in its emphasis on Christianity and not enough on the Constitution. By my unofficial count the Constitution was mentioned once by each candidate. America does not need a Christian-in-chief; it needs a commander-in-chief.
For the past eight years it could be persuasively argued that we've had the former in lieu of the latter and it didn't work.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that one must be an active member of a Christian denomination to qualify for the presidency. But that is how the current discourse plays itself out -- one's private morality trumps the public morality. Is where one goes to church is more important than protecting the Constitution?
Any of you parents raising your children to be anything other than Christian had better rethink you position if you harbor any notions of your child occupying the White House. Our current public discourse strongly suggests that unless one is of the Christian faith, it is impossible to protect and defend the Constitution.
In the ongoing war on terror, Christianity has not proven to be an added benefit to understanding the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions.
An interesting question Warren could have posed to Obama and McCain: "How as president do you negotiate your job when the Constitution is in conflict with your understanding of Christianity?
After each candidate, quoted their favorite biblical passage demonstrating the consistency between the two documents, in an attempt to illustrate no conflict exists, Warren could have then followed with: "Why didn't the possession of Christianity prevent Maher Arar from being tortured?
On September 26, 2002, U.S. authorities detained Arar, the Syria-born Canadian citizen, during a stopover in New York en route from Tunisia to Canada. He was subsequently sent to Syria for torture under the controversial American practice of "extraordinary rendition."
After a year of torture and pressure by the Canadian government, Arar was released and returned to Canada.
According to the official inquiry conducted by the Canadian government, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents acted on false and misleading information supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The inquiry findings led to a $10 million settlement.
But Arar's name still appears on the U.S. watch list -- American authorities are refusing Canada's request to purge his name, which effectively excludes Arar from at least one-third of the world's nations.
I raise this because of all the discussion about change; this election is shaping up as more of the same. We continue to demand a pious standard from the candidates that would have easily eliminated Jefferson and Lincoln.
It was not his private morality, but Lincoln's deep commitment to the public morality that kept the Union together. By contemporary fundamentalist standards, Jefferson would most likely be considered an atheist, at best agonistic.
During the crisis moment, the presidential standard is, and will continue to be, who can best defend the Constitution and not who can recite the Sermon on the Mount verbatim.
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. He is the author of Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his website byronspeaks.com