Faith doesn't have boundaries is the problem

Manny Fernandez has an article in The New York Times about Rick Perry and his 'faith', and Paul Horwitz (a Jew, wanna bet), a professor of law at the University of Alabama and the author of The Agnostic Age: Law, Religion and the Constitution, has a response at the bottom of the post:

In April, as his state reeled from wildfires and a drought, Texas Governor Rick Perry sought assistance from the federal government, but also from a higher power. He asked the state to pray for rain, issuing an official proclamation that “I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, 22 April 2011, to Sunday, 24 April 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.”
One Sunday in 2005, Perry signed legislation requiring that women under the age of eighteen get parental consent before having an abortion. The signing took place during a ceremony at a Fort Worth school run by an evangelical Christian church.
Five weeks after the 11 September attacks, Perry bowed his head and said “amen” as a Baptist pastor led a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. The prayer was noteworthy not for what it said, but for where it was said: at a student assembly in a public middle school in East Texas. Afterward, Perry said he had no problem ignoring the Supreme Court’s landmark 1962 ruling that barred organized prayer in public schools.
In Houston, thousands of people are expected to gather at Reliant Stadium for a Christian-themed prayer service that Perry created and promoted. Though Perry has been criticized for spearheading an event that burnishes his conservative Christian credentials as he considers running for president, the prayer rally is only the latest instance, albeit the highest profile one, of the governor of the nation’s second-largest state emphasizing his Christian beliefs and blurring the line between church and state.
“The scale of this event is new, but the essence of this is familiar to anyone who has followed him,” said James Henson, a longtime political observer and the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “He’s never hesitated to invoke faith in public and for public purposes.”
Few political figures in America have so consistently and so unabashedly intermingled their personal faith and their public persona, peppering speeches with quotations from Scripture, speaking from the pulpit at churches, regularly meeting and strategizing with evangelical Christians and even, in one recent speech, equating public office with the ministry.
He is known for forwarding Christian-themed emails to friends and slipping notecards to aides upon which he has scribbled Bible verses. Two months before the primary last year, Perry spoke during Sunday services at the non-denominational Elevate Life Church in Frisco and walked away with a distinctive gift from the pastor: a long silver sword, given to the governor as a symbol of the word of God.
The Christian focus of his political career and the attention that the rally has drawn have given Perry a distinct advantage should he try to position himself as a favored candidate among religious conservatives. But the rally and his outspoken Christianity could also provide opponents an opening to cast him as an extremist. Should he enter the race, he would find himself battling Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who has also stressed her long commitment to conservative Christian values, for the support of that voting bloc, especially in key early contests like the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, where those voters can be decisive.
Last month, when asked if he intended to mount a White House bid, Perry told a reporter for The Des Moines Register that he was “getting more and more comfortable every day that this is what I’ve been called to do. This is what America needs.” But, to reporters in Texas, Perry denied there was a purely religious connotation to his remark, saying: “There’s a lot of different ways to be called. My mother may call me for dinner.”
To many political observers and to his critics, that sounded like backpedaling. “You saw the politician, and not the man of faith,” Henson said.
Perry announced in June that he was inviting governors and people from across the country to join him in a day of prayer and fasting at Reliant Stadium because, as his official proclamation put it: “As Jesus prayed publicly for the benefit of others in John 11:41-42, so should we express our faith in this way.” Although he has invited people of all faiths, Perry has described it as a “Christian-centered” event to pray for the troubles of the nation. The rally is being organized and financed by the American Family Association, an evangelical organization listed as an anti-gay hate group by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.
Opposition to the governor’s involvement in the event and his support of the American Family Association has been widespread, including several leaders of the Methodist community in Texas, the governor’s own denomination. They said in interviews that the Methodist tradition teaches inclusion, and that for the governor to sponsor an event that they viewed as exclusionary to Jews, Muslims, and those of other faiths was wrong. “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s divisive,” said Tom Spencer, a Methodist and chief executive of Interfaith Action of Central Texas, a multifaith group once led by Perry’s former pastor. “I think the political motivations behind it are transparent.”
The Reverend Kevin Young, pastor of Linden United Methodist Church, a four-hundred-member church in Cass County, a Republican stronghold in East Texas, was one of more than fifty religious leaders who signed a statement drafted by the Anti-Defamation League objecting to the governor’s participation in the rally. “I’m not happy that our governor is using an event like this essentially to appeal to a voting bloc,” Young said. “I just don’t see that it’s a sincere effort to seek divine guidance for the state.”
The governor’s aides and supporters (more than eight thousand people had registered to attend the rally as of Friday) have said that Perry made clear that he wanted people of all religious backgrounds to pray with him. They also said that he came up with the idea for the event, called “the Response”, in December, long before he began seriously considering a presidential run.
“Is he sincere in his faith? Absolutely,” said Ed Robb, a friend of Perry’s family and the senior pastor at The Woodlands United Methodist Church outside Houston, where Perry preached a Sunday sermon as a layman in 1997, when he was state agricultural commissioner. “Is it some newly found, politically convenient addition to his life? No. It’s long-term and it’s authentic. If the governor wants a prayer rally, I think we ought to allow him to express his faith.”
A spokeswoman for Perry said that the governor has never shied away from speaking about his faith, and that he typically attends a church service every Sunday, regardless of where he is traveling. “Governor Perry isn’t concerned with criticisms that have been made against the Response,” said the spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier. “He believes it will be an important and impactful opportunity for all Americans of faith to pray for our nation’s challenges; that is what this event is about and that’s where the governor’s focus remains. His faith is a part of who he is, and plays an important role in the principles he defends and the decisions that have defined his leadership.”
Perry, 61, has been a member of Tarrytown United Methodist Church in Austin since February of 1998, when he was agriculture commissioner. George W. Bush attended the same church while governor. The red-brick, 2,300-member church is one of the largest Methodist churches in Austin. Lately, however, Perry has been more regularly attending Lake Hills Church, a more contemporary evangelical megachurch in West Austin.
Lake Hills is closer to where Perry lives with his family, and it is also where his former speechwriter, Andrew Barlow, once served as pastor of creative development. It has an auditorium-style sanctuary where a rock band performs. Perry contrasted the styles of the two churches, telling The Austin American-Statesman last year: “They dunk. Methodists sprinkle.”
Perry grew up in Paint Creek, a small unincorporated West Texas community where his parents were cotton farmers. As he described it in his 2008 book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For, life in Paint Creek “revolved around school, church and, for most boys, the Boy Scouts.” Perry, who was an Eagle Scout, attended Sunday school at the local Methodist church. At age twelve, he went to a Methodist summer camp, where he met the father of Robb, the Woodlands pastor. Robb’s father, the Reverend Ed Robb, a camp counselor, taught Perry how to swim and helped shape his faith. In 2002, Perry told Texas Monthly that the elder Robb, that summer, “led me to the Lord”.
Perry has also described having a kind of spiritual awakening in his late twenties, when he returned to his parents’ farm after flying C-130s in the Air Force, a few years before he began his political career. At a meeting in May to raise money for the prayer rally, he talked about his state of mind at the time: “At 27 years old, I knew that I’d been called to the ministry,” Perry said “I’ve just always been really stunned by how big a pulpit I was going to have. I still am. I truly believe with all my heart that God has put me in this place at this time to do His will.”

Rico says that having a long silver sword as a symbol of the word of God certainly belies that whole 'peace of Jesus' thing, don't it? But Paul Horwitz responds:

Governor Rick Perry of Texas is scheduled to appear at Reliant Stadium in Houston for “The Response,” an all-day event of Christian-centered prayer and fasting intended, as Perry explains on the event’s website, to address the various crises that have “besieged” America.
Perry’s use of official resources, including a gubernatorial proclamation, to promote the prayer service has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups. He has been hinting at a run for the Republican presidential nomination, and many critics see the prayer service as an improper attempt to court the religious right. One group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, sought an injunction barring Perry from promoting the event, saying his actions “brazenly cross the line between government and religion”. Last week, a federal judge denied that request, ruling that Perry’s invitations to prayer were “requests, not commands” and thus did not violate the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. The court was right on the law, but its decision tells only half the story. Perry’s critics have plenty of ammunition, but they’ve chosen the wrong weapon. The problem is not only that such legal maneuvers routinely fail; it’s also that they do a disservice to religious freedom and diminish meaningful public debate. There are better ways to express disagreement with religious statements made by elected officials than to use the courts to try to pre-empt them.
Religion plays too important a part in many people’s lives to be denied a role in the public square. To be sure, there are some things the state can’t do, like demand that schoolchildren pray each day. But elected officials, like other citizens, are free to have and express religious views. And voters are entitled to support or reject public officials for all kinds of reasons, including their religious views. To hold that elected officials can’t publicly invoke their religion won’t help a country of believers, agnostics and atheists reach any kind of consensus. It will only impoverish the conversation, depriving many citizens of the ability to make, and judge, arguments that reflect their most cherished views.
Moreover, by trying to banish religion from the public sphere, Perry’s critics end up cutting themselves out of the debate. When religion is viewed as a fundamentally private matter, the natural corollary is to think that it is inappropriate to criticize someone’s faith. Thus, when such critics lose the constitutional argument, they find themselves in the awkward position of not feeling entitled to directly criticize the religious view in question.
Politicians who invoke their faith to lure religious voters benefit from this paralysis. Consider Mitt Romney. When questioned by voters during the last presidential campaign about his Mormon faith, Romney commendably refused to disavow it. But he also refused to discuss it in any detail, claiming that would impose a religious test on his candidacy.
This double standard needs to end. If religion can’t be forbidden in our public debates, even for elected officials, neither should it be immune from public criticism. And in the case of Perry and “The Response,” there are good reasons to be critical.
Perry is free to call a meeting where only people who agree that Jesus Christ is the one true savior are welcome. Many Christian politicians understandably share that belief, but few of them commence potential presidential campaigns that way. They believe that all Americans, regardless of faith, have a role to play in making this a more perfect union. We are entitled to shun any politician who rejects that approach.
We should question the prayer service’s tone, too. Other politicians have invoked prayer in times of trouble; Abraham Lincoln was one of them. But with characteristic humility, Lincoln called for repentance, not sectarian struggle. He saw human inequality and cruelty as the real sin against God. By emphasizing creeds, not deeds, Perry encourages the very divisions that Lincoln believed lay at the root of America’s ills.
Finally, we’re entitled to judge Perry’s association with the prayer service’s organizers. Many people, religious and otherwise, reject the views of the American Family Association, a principal organizer of the event, whose vitriolic stances on issues like gay rights have led the Southern Poverty Law Center to call it a “hate group”. Perry has tried to distance himself from some of these views. But we can certainly ask why he has embraced those who hold them.
Some people think we would be better off without religion in public life. In the long run, however, we would lose much more than we gain. Our debates may be more contentious if we allow religion in, but they will also be more committed and honest. Just as the Constitution allows Perry to stake his political future on “The Response,” it also allows the rest of us to answer back.