For my part in this discussion, I will apologize. I made some incorrect assumptions based upon my admittedly limited and anecdotal experience with pastors abusing their authority.

Anwyn,

It was Roger Williams (a Baptist minister) who first used the phrase.

2) I have filed posts referring to Obama under “Jerks” before, and it was he I was referring to now.

3) Norm did. You have refuted him.

4) My final comment did not say that I am thankful we don’t worship together. It said I am thankful you are not my pastor. If you call that uncivil, so be it. I call it noting the fact that you are not a man I could look up to as a Christian leader.

There is no Constitutional principle of separation of church and state. The phrase came from Thomas Jefferson and has nothing to do with the Constitution.

Nobody is being uncivil here. I did not come onto your blog and begin arguing with you, nor did I argue with you here. I simply questioned your assumption that Obama does not receive campaign money from interest groups and commented in passing on the Oregonian’s partisanship. Commenter Norm made some incorrect assumptions, which you have now refuted.

I have no “questions or concerns” for you. If you were my pastor, I would, but thankfully that is not the case and you do not answer to me in any way.

Take care.

Her’e a little bit of what I’ve written on this subject:

When I endorsed Barack Obama I said this:

“As a minister in the United Church of Christ, I trust deeply in the Constitutional principle of separation of church and state and my endorsement is therefore a personal one and does not reflect on the church I serve or my denomination. But as a citizen I believe that all Americans must engage in the political process as individuals for democracy to thrive. So I choose to add my voice today with millions of other Americans concerned about the direction of this nation.”

In a following post I made it clear how important I beleive it is to seperate any partisan political work from church life:

“…I refrain from any campaign work during work hours, the campaign knows only to call my private cell or home numbers, I do not discuss my involvement on campaigns with church members, and I would never promote my endorsement of a candidate from the pulpit during worship or during any other church related activity.”

I would never use church resources of any kind to promote a candidate. My endorsement was made on my personal blog and on the senator’s website. As USA Today reports, that isn’t the case for The Rev. Wiley Drake, a leading Southern Baptist Convention figure. Drake recently endorsed Mike Huckabee’s campaign for president on church letterhead. Now he wants God to silence his critics:

http://chuckcurrie.blogs.com/chuck_currie/2007/08/southern-baptis.html

There are lines we cannot cross as clergy.

Finally, no I do not use by blog as a tax deduction.

If you want to argue with me do it in s civil manner. We don’t need to spend all our time tearing people apart.

And I happy to respond to any questions / concerns you might have.

Good night.

So, the church is a tax-exempt non-profit, eh? What says the IRS about his candidate (as opposed to issues) advocacy? Hmmm… might be worth looking into.

I’m not going anywhere near the pro-choice/Christian thing. :-)