Rick Warren, who's about to interview Obama and McCain,
gets interviewed by our own Jeff Goldberg:
I believe in the separation of church and state, but I do not believe
in the separation of politics from religion. Faith is simply a
worldview. A person who says he puts his faith on the shelf when he's
making decisions is either an idiot or a liar. It's entirely
appropriate for me to ask what is [the Presidential candidates'] frame of reference.
To which Andrew
splutters:
The entire basis for Western secular government, which rests on the
capacity of people to distance absolute truth from political affairs,
is based on idiocy or lies? I wonder if Warren has ever read Locke, or
Hobbes, or Machiavelli or would even understand the term secularism if t knocked him square off his pedestal.
You know, I can pretty much guarantee that Andrew has read a
lot more of Locke, Hobbes and Machiavelli than Rick Warren - and of any relevant political philosopher you care to name, for that matter. Yet oddly, the bumptious Warren seems to have a stronger grasp of what separation of church and state has actually meant in the American political tradition, both historically and philosophically, than my vastly more erudite colleague.
