Roberts' Analysis of the Inaugural Address from a Christian Perspective Dovetails with My Own

On his blog, Pastor Mark Roberts has been doing a series of posts evaluating President Bush's January 20 Inaugural Address from a Christian perspective. One passage near the end of today's installment particularly struck me:

From a biblical perspective, what the President actually said about freedom was not correct. If one of my associate pastors, in a sermon preached in my church, were to say that the force of freedom is the only power that can overcome hatred, that pastor would be visiting my supervisory woodshed in a jiffy. I’d send that pastor back to do more biblical homework. I am not doubting the President’s faith or his basic evangelical theology. But I do find his statement about freedom to be inconsistent with biblical theology. It actually sounds a whole lot more like classic theological liberalism.

I agree with Mark. In fact, I wrote about it on the day after the Inaugural. Among the things I said then:

I think one has to conclude that, as is true of the statements of any political figure who represents a pluralistic society and who wants to maintain popular support for his agenda, the Inaugural Address was, spiritually speaking, a mish-mash, reflective as much of Enlightenment notions as Christian ones.

This fact hit me when I heard the President say yesterday:

There is only one force that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and the tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

Really?

From a Christian perspective, this assertion is suspect at many levels.

I went on to identify those levels. I invite you to read both Mark's analysis and mine and give your feedback to us.

(By the way, it makes me feel good when a theologian as good as Mark is on the same wave length as I'm on!)