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Dissent Of The Day
08 May 2008 05:10 pm
A reader writes:
In discussing McCain’s relationship with Rod Parsley, you wrote:
Of course, a twenty-year relationship with a preacher counts for more than a public political endorsement and embrace of a religious nut-job.
I suppose this now qualifies as the conventional wisdom, but from where I’m sitting, it seems exactly backwards. I speak from some experience. I am a minister (in the United Church of Christ, no less) and I can tell you that my politics have very little to do with my pastoral relationships. The Republican elected officials who sit in the pews of my church know that I am a lefty; they don’t particularly care because they don’t come to me for political advice, any more than I would hit up my accountant for tips on lowering my cholesterol. There is more to life than politics – even (especially?) in the relationship between a politician and her pastor.
Senator Obama had a pastoral relationship with Jeremiah Wright; Senator McCain has a political relationship with Rod Parsley –the only thing bringing them together is a shared political agenda. That, I think, should make Rod Parsley’s odious political rantings far more relevant to the presidential campaign than those of Jeremiah Wright.
But what do I know?
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