A Double Confession of Faith

Presidential candidates Obama and McCain make their confessions on primetime TV in attempts to win over evangelical churches.

John McCain does not like to refer to his first marriage in public. With good reason: he embarked on his relationship with his current wife before he had divorced the first. And although he wrote about them in his autobiography, Barack Obama, for his part, does not enjoy talking about his years of “hardship” in Chicago, during which he used drugs and alcohol. After all, other candidates have found themselves in hot water over less than that. And yet the two contenders for the presidency both made lengthy personal confessions on Saturday night primetime TV. One after the other-–they were on stage together for only a few seconds-–they each answered the same set of questions put to them by the Reverend Rick Warren, one of the United States’ most influential pastors.

The setting for the event was California’s Saddleback Church, a “megachurch” boasting a congregation of over 20,000 who attend “Pastor Rick”’s sermons. The tone of the proceedings varied-–cheerful and relaxed at one moment, serious and solemn the next-–and both candidates acquitted themselves relatively well. But the real winner was the place of “personal faith” in American politics and the importance accorded to the evangelical churches, whose members are being wooed by the country’s politicians.

The Reverend Rick Warren is a national celebrity. His book “The Purpose Driven Life,” which sets out to do no more or less than explain the meaning of life, has sold over 25 million copies in the U.S. No-one says no to an invitation to Saddleback. It was a golden opportunity for the two presidential candidates, who have agreed to only three other head-to-head debates starting on the 26th September.

Although he is closer to the views of the religious right, the discussion must have been difficult for McCain, reluctant as he is to open up about his personal life. Obama, on the other hand, who is much more willing to talk about his religious beliefs, must do everything he can to try to connect with this younger and more open-minded wing of the evangelical church.

Asked by the pastor about their greatest personal failures, Obama mentioned his “difficult youth”, while McCain, referring to the failure of his first marriage, admitted that he was an “imperfect person.” When later asked to define marriage, both candidates replied that it was “union between a man and a woman,” despite the fact that Obama has declared his support for civil unions for gay couples.

On the issues of abortion or the nomination of Supreme Court judges, Obama did not disguise the fact that he disagrees with the views of the traditional religious right. But he passed the test with flying colors by declaring his certainty that “Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him”, and his willingness to see the Americans as emissaries in “the struggle against Evil.” An even more relaxed McCain came out with a host of witticisms and anecdotes. He also managed to draw the discussion back to more political topics and doubtless scored points by comparing Al-Qaeda to “absolute Evil” (Obama had referred to poverty).

The fact that this “conversation” took place in a church rather than in a political setting does not seem to have assuaged the objections of other religious leaders. The event has “promoted the fiction that the American people are electing a pastor-in-chief, rather than a commander-in-chief,” protested the Reverend Welton Gaddy, President of the Interfaith Alliance, who denounced it as a competition between the candidates for the title of “holier than thou.”