Yesterday, I posted something at NLT about the Sojourners event with the three leading Democratic candidates.  Having now had a chance to read the transcript, I want to delve a little more deeply.

To begin with, John Edwards offered an essentially incoherent position on the relationship between his faith and his actions as President (shudder!).  Here's Edwards on the role his faith plays in the question of same-sex marriage:

I think there's a difference between my belief system and what the responsibilities of the president of the United States are. It is the reason we have separation of church and state....  I have huge respect for those who have a different view about this. ....

So I think we have to be very careful about ensuring that the president of the United States is not using his belief system and imposing that belief system on the rest of the country.... 

I think what that means in this case is the substantive rights that go with partnerships, civil unions, for example, and all the subsequent rights that go with that, should be recognized in this country, at least in my judgment, should be recognized. And I think it is not the role of the federal government to tell either faith-based institutions, churches, synagogues, what they should or should not recognize. Nor should the federal government be telling states what they should recognize.

Same-sex marriage, he says, is wrong, from his personal (presumably faith-based) point of view, but civil unions are not (though where that view is grounded isn't altogether clear).  It's also not altogether clear what role the federal government has in recognizing and promoting civil unions.  If we give him the benefit of a doubt here, let's call him a "federalist" on this question, but one who doesn't think that specifically religious opposition to same-sex marriage has any place in politics, at any level, state or federal.

Asked whether he has a "duty" to "go with [his] moral belief, Edwards answers:

[M]y faith, my belief in Christ plays an enormous role in the way I view the world. But I think I also understand the distinction between my job as president of the United States, my responsibility to be respectful of and to embrace [yes, he said "embrace"] all faith beliefs in this country because we have many faith beliefs in America. And for that matter we have many faith beliefs in the world.

Respect for religious pluralism, in other words, ought to prevent anyone from acting on even a well-grounded religious "worldview."

But then there's this, in response to a question about poverty, posed by Jim Wallis, for whom it is "a gospel issue," a "biblical priority":

[L]et me first say thank you to you, Jim, and to Sojourners for its great leadership on this, what I think is a great moral issue facing this country today and I would add to that, this the is the cause of my life....

I think there's a very long and consistent pattern of this being the cause of my life. And I might add everything I can do, everything in my power that I'm able to do, I will do to drive the issue of poverty in this presidential campaign so that everyone is required to talk about it. Because I think it is the great moral issue of our time.

While Edwards never explicitly embraces Wallis's specifically religious view of our duty to ameliorate poverty, preferring to characterize it as a moral issue, he also doesn't rebuke Wallis for improperly injecting "biblical" views into politics.  Wouldn't respect for "many faith beliefs," respect for the separation of church and state, and care not to "impose his belief system on the rest of the country" call for a different response than Edwards offers?  It seems that, for Edwards, there are some religious imperatives that are appropriate inspirations for governmental action and others that aren't.  Of course, he offers no basis--rational or otherwise--for the distinction he makes.

Shocking.

Edwards also couldn't resist a gratuitous swipe at George W. Bush:

[M]y faith, my belief in Christ plays an enormous role in the way I view the world. But I think I also understand the distinction between my job as president of the United States, my responsibility to be respectful of and to embrace all faith beliefs in this country because we have many faith beliefs in America. And for that matter we have many faith beliefs in the world. And I think one of the problems that we've gotten into is some identification of the president of the United States with a particular faith belief as opposed to showing great respect for all faith beliefs.

Let's see.  President Bush is the first President to celebrate Ramadan in the White House.  He regularly acknowledges a wide array of religious holidays from a wide array of traditions.  He has gone out of his way to characterize Islam as a religion of peace, and to include Muslim clerics in religious events surrounding 9/11.  There is, in other words, absolutely no basis for Edwards's swipe.  One might say that it is uncharitable and hence perhaps un-Christian.

Oh well, this is politics, and Edwards believes in the separation of church and state, and apparently in the strategic use of religion in politics.  He respects and embraces everyone, except those with whose religiously-inspired (so he says) agendas he disagrees.