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Only Two Authorities

On inauguration day, Mark Driscoll published this tweet:

Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.

My mental response when I read this was unprintable, but the Rev. Emily C. Heath, blogging at The Huffington Post, is, fortunately, much more gracious:

If Barack Obama says he is a Christian, if he confesses his faith in Christ, that’s where the conversation ends. The same is true for George W. Bush, or Franklin D. Roosevelt, or even Mark Driscoll.

There is a difference between saying to someone “my understanding of Christian faith is different from yours on this issue” and saying “we don’t believe the same thing, so you must not be a Christian.” I often disagreed with George W. Bush’s actions, and struggled to reconcile them with my understanding of Christian faith, but I refused to speculate on the sincerity of his faith. That’s not my place. And I’ve had it done far too often in my life to turn around and do it to others.

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