Rodrigo Neely - December 23rd, 2008 in Commentary 0 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

Rick Warren is giving the preacher talk at Obama’s inaguration.

Warren sucks. He is a homophobic, fundamentalist, who believes that the purpose of life is to have the magic voice of Jesus inside your head tell you what to do.

This is, no doubt, frustrating.

I am of the school of thought that religion is usually harmful, and that evangelical Christians are a dangerous political force in the U.S.

I am of the opinion that Christianity, in its mainstream practice, should be resisted and that we must write and make creative and artistic efforts to decrease its influence and popularity.

But I am 100% calm about Obama and Rick Warren.

When Obama came into politics in Illinois in the 90s he identified as an agnostic.

When he realized that the political deal making in his district happened in the black churches he conveniently converted to Christianity. These details were reported in the July, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.

Now, I know some of you are appalled at this.

I would argue that Obama is merely performing a political necessity that has been true for thousands of years. Most Americans are Christian, and believe Christianity is essential to good leadership. It is the easiest of things to appease.

See watch, “I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” Pay no attention to the fingers crossed behind my back.

Machiavelli wrote, centuries ago, “in all matters appear to be religious, indeed be religious,” in The Prince.

The famous secularist legal scholar Eddie Tabash points out that Clinton pontificated on the virtues of school prayer when he was on the campaign trail, and convinced the electorate that school prayer was something he believed in strongly.

But when he was elected he appointed Judges that struck it down at every turn, and those same judges held up separation of church and state.

Tabash says we can be confident Obama will appoint secularist judges. Judges who uphold separation of church and state.

I would like to close with this:

It is our job, the job of secularists, to shift the zeitgeist so that religion is not so powerful that all American presidents have to pander to it, or sacrifice their ability to be re-elected.

But instead it seems to me that secularists get bent out of shape when a politician does pander to the religious, and at the same time finds the whole idea of us trying to promote secularism among the religious to be the most abhorrent strategy in the world.

We have a mentality that is destined to fail, and as long as we are so cowardly about our ideas we can expect more and more pandering from politicians to people like Rick Warren.

We should be grateful that politicians who have secularist sympathies, as Obama has expressed on several occasions, has the shrewdness to do what must be done.

The president appoints judges people, that is how separation of church and state is ultimately protected.

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