I have to admit that I was hoping for a McCain-Romney ticket. But after watching the Democratic National Convention, I’ve become convinced that the Democrats have become the party of style over substance. Even with all the faux unity that Hillary oozed, it’s clear that the Democrats are a party on the verge of crisis.

The word I got from Denver was that the appearance of unity is masking a lot of discontent about the disenfranchising of Hillary supporters by her exclusion from the ticket. There are a lot of 35-64 women who find an Obama-Biden ticket a little nauseating.

So when John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his VP pick, I was initially skeptical. The Obama campaign seized on some of the obvious deficiences of Gov. Palin — too inexperienced, being the main critique. Now, I find this criticism pretty ironic, coming from Sen. Obama, who has spent most of his Senate career running for the White House. Obama has no executive experience. None. Zero. And he’s running for the highest office in the land. And he’s critical of Gov. Palin’s lack of experience?

Even worse, if this statement from the Obama campaign:

“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,”

Again, Obama’s campaign belittles and marginalizes small-town America as being irrelevant and out-of-touch. That’s not going to play well in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia.

And as this comparison should remind us, Palin is more qualified for the job Obama is running for than he is.

The other major criticism from the Obama campaign has been Palin’s staunch pro-life stance. Unfortunately for Sen. Obama, who lacked the strength of conviction to walk out of Jeremiah Wright’s church, Gov. Palin has lived out her convictions.

In December, her doctor told her that prenatal tests indicated the child she was expecting in May would be born with Down syndrome, a genetic condition that stems from an extra chromosome and that impedes a child’s physical, intellectual and language development.

Only one year into her governorship and with four children at home already, a child with Down syndrome would present serious challenges. Studies in the late 90s showed that more than 80 percent of prenatal Down syndrome diagnoses end in abortion.

Ending the pregnancy, however, was never an option for the Palins. On April 18, Sarah Palin gave birth to a 6-pound, 2-ounce son, Trig Paxson Van Palin.

“We’ve both been very vocal about being pro-life,” Palin told the Associated Press, speaking of herself and her husband, Todd. “We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential.”

The day after the birth, the Palins released the following statement: “Trig is beautiful and already adored by us. We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives. We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed.”

And the kinds of attacks found here are disgusting and hardly reflect the kind of campaign that Sen. Obama claims to be running. It smacks of desperation. When you have to gin up this kind of stuff to make inroads, then your candidate is in big trouble.

I like the prospects of Joe Biden losing his mind in a debate with Palin and jumping all over her. If that’s the case, then you can kiss suburban soccer moms goodbye.

Zogby has the race essentially tied, after the DNC and the Palin announcement. Not the kind of bounce that Obama was expecting. Gallup has Obama ahead by 6. CNN has the race virtually tied.

You’ve got to figure that with the GOP about to hold a scaled-down convention that may ultimately minimize their risk to exposure (no Bush, no Cheney, no Schwarzenegger), we may enter the home stretch of this campaign with McCain/Palin in the driver’s seat with Obama/BIden playing catch-up. After all, Obama has played all his cards, in front of 85,000 people in Denver. What’s he got left? Meanwhile, the slow boil of McCain/Palin may simmer along until November quite nicely.

This ad is sponsored by a group called the Matthew25 Network. Here is their mission statement:

The Matthew 25 Network is a community of Christians - Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical - inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable.

The election of our public officials, and the politics they stand for, are a reflection of our core values. We believe that those elected to public office carry an important trust, as their decisions have a profound impact on our nation and our world.

We believe that people of faith should actively participate in the political process as an important avenue for social change. We are called by our faith to engage in the world as it is, while we seek after and hope for God’s Kingdom.

Therefore, while no elected official will be without flaw, we come together as individuals to support candidates for public office who share the values of the Matthew 25 Network: promoting life with dignity, caring for the least of these, strengthening and supporting families, stewardship of God’s Creation, working for peace and justice at home and abroad, and promoting the common good.

Their main purpose, these days, seems to be supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama.

I have to say that I’m very disappointed with Brian McLaren’s participation in this ad. I’m a big fan of McLaren and find his work to be very helpful. We probably agree more than we disagree on most theological issues, and we probably disagree more than we agree on most political issues. With that said, I have a great deal of respect for McLaren.

However, I think it’s incredibly inappropriate for McLaren to come out and support a political candidate — any political candidate — like this.

I have no problem with people of faith, Christian or otherwise, being involved in politics. In fact, I think it’s part of the calling of a follower of Jesus to care about government and to be involved in electing good leaders. My problem has always been when religious people, especially religious leaders, find themselves so enamoured with a politician that they allow themselves to be used for political gains, even when those political gains seem completely virtuous.

This is the problem that’s plagued the so-called religious right for the past three decades. Men like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim Dobson, and many others confused the agenda of Jesus with the agenda of the Republican Party. Make no mistake, political parties exist for one purpose — to acquire and maintain power. They may do so in the name of justice, equality, civic virtue, etc., but ultimately, in the mind of the politician, the way to achieve change in society is through the ballot box.

I’d argue that Jesus had a different agenda. Jesus came to establish God’s kingdom on earth, and he didn’t need a political party to nominate him or voters to elect him. His followers didn’t get together a write a party platform. They lived out their agenda through the power of the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ known as the church.

Again, that’s not to say that governments and the political process don’t have some role to play in furthering God’s kingdom. I think God wants righteous leaders to be in power, and those leaders certainly have the power to effect change. But when leaders begin to confuse their obligations to God with their obligations to the state, it’s a recipe for trouble. There are separate agendas at work. The role of the church ought to be speaking truth to power, which becomes increasingly difficult when your relationships with power affect your ability to speak truth.

We’ve seen it happen with the religious right. Religious leaders have leveraged issues like abortion and gay rights to acquire a seat at the table in the powerful circles in Washington. Rather than actually making good policy, these religious leaders have instead made names for themselves. They get invited into the halls of power and are given the feeling that they have influence. At the same time, politicians have used these relationships to get elected and stay in office. It’s very convenient for politicians who need votes to tap into the power of the Focus on the Family mailing lists or the Christian Broadcasting Network’s audience. Meanwhile, the Kingdom agenda gets lost in this mutually beneficial relationship.

My hope would be that Brian McLaren would be wise enough to understand that, while he admires Barack Obama, he shouldn’t let that admiration cloud his commitment to the ultimate pursuit of Jesus’ agenda.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the facade of Joel Osteen’s prosperity gospel would begin to crumble. It’s clear to me that he’s all sizzle and no steak. At some point, all the sugary sweet, “Jesus wants you to be rich and happy,” talk was going to come back to bite him. From Barbara Ehrenreich’s blog:

In the theology of Christian positive thinking, “everything happens for a reason.” The Osteens may conclude that the divine intention was to prod them into to emulating Joyce Meyers and Creflo Dollar by investing in a private jet. But there’s another possible message from on high: that this brand of Christianity fosters a distinctly un-Christian narcissism.

A few months back, I dedicated some time to examining some of the on-the-record statements that Barack Obama has made about his spirituality.

At that time, I linked to Cathleen Falsani’s interview with Obama from four years ago, along with some other primary texts. Now, Falsani is reacting to this article by Cal Thomas, who is skeptical of Obama’s Christian faith. Thomas concludes, after much parsing of both Obama’s words and the additional insight offered by Falsani, that:

Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian. Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called “false prophets.”

Falsani responds:

Obama says he believes, abides and is trying to follow Jesus.

He’s a humble believer and doesn’t want to give the impression that he has the corner on truth. I respect that, although it makes fielding questions about his faith more complicated and provocative.

It is dangerous to try to judge the quality of a man’s faith. That is God’s purview, not ours.

This back-and-forth raises a couple of important questions. First, is Barack Obama a Christian? And perhaps we ought to ask two qualifying questions to that question. How can we know if he’s a Christian? And, I think more importantly, does it matter?

To the question of whether or not Obama is a Christian, I’m skeptical that the adequate forensic tools exist to answer this question. I think this is a question that is getting more difficult to answer in the age we live, partly because evangelical Christians have so narrowly defined what it means to be a “Christian”. Historically, the Roman Catholic Church has a fairly airtight claim to being “Christian”. But there are plenty of evangelicals who openly question the theological genuineness of that claim. In fact, the test for orthodoxy seems to be getting tougher and tougher to pass. There are many who spend large amounts of time and resources drawing lines between who’s “in” and who’s “out”.

With all that said, the only way we can truly judge the condition of Obama’s soul and the veracity of his claim to be a follower of Jesus, in the historic, theological sense, would be to spend time parsing his owns words and actions. At that point, the whole matter becomes very subjective. Thomas, Falsani, and others have spent some time trying to deconstruct the words of Obama to determine what he really means when he claims to be a Christian. A person’s starting point will dictate where they arrive, on something like this.

Can Barack Obama confess the Nicene Creed? Probably so. Does he call himself “born again”? Probably not. Does he believe Jesus is God? From what I can tell, it appears so. Does he believe that some people will go to heaven and others will go to hell? That seems less clear.

And this brings me to my second question — does it matter if Barack Obama is a Christian?

Quite frankly, I don’t think it does. If the last 20 years of politics should teach us anything, it’s that the relationship between faith and politics can often become very dysfunctional. Should a candidate’s faith matter? I suppose that it should, in the sense that religious faith of any variety ought to guide and direct a person in his or her decision-making. The great religions of the world all have strong ethical traditions that, when when practiced, should make their adherents better people and, consequently, better leaders.

But does it really matter if Obama follows Jesus, Mohammed, Buddah, or no God or prophet all? And when I ask, “does it matter,” I mean in the sense that it would make him any better or worse of a president if he professed faith in one or the other.

After all, Bill Clinton professed a Christian faith, and he not only maintained an inappropriate relationship with an intern for a long period of time, but he also did everything he could to cover up that relationship and withhold that information from investigators and the public. You could also point out that George W. Bush professes a Christian faith, but he’s made numerous decisions that could be described as somehow contrary to the teachings of Jesus, again, depending on how you want to understand the entirety of Christian thought.

It’s become pretty troubling in recent years to see how Republicans and now Democrats are increasingly using faith as a tool to acquire power by exploiting the power of people’s faith to gain votes. Shouldn’t this election be more about policy than piety? Shouldn’t we be electing the person we think is best suited to make hard decisions in times of uncertainty?  And shouldn’t we be doing this irrespective of the personal religious faith of an individual candidate?

I’m curious what you think.