The term “bully pulpit” was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, America’s twenty-sixth president, often used the word “bully” as an adjective meaning “superb.” The expression “bully pulpit” was used by Roosevelt in reference to the American presidency; in particularly, to the superb platform from which the president alone is allowed to speak to the populace. Presidents, in Roosevelt’s mind, were to use the bully pulpit to persuade the people to pursue right courses of action for the good of the country.
Speaking of the bully pulpit enjoyed by him as president, Roosevelt once said, “My great joy and glory in occupying an exalted position in the nation [is that] I am enabled to preach the practical moralities of the Bible to my fellow-countrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world.” Can you imagine a present-day president exclaiming to the nation how he exults in the unique opportunity provided him by the presidency to “preach the practical moralities of the Bible to [his] fellow-countrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world”? Furthermore, can you imagine the political firestorm that such a statement would ignite and how mercilessly condemned and maligned such a president would be?
Modern-day presidents, unlike Theodore Roosevelt, no longer use the bully pulpit to persuade the populace to do the right things, but to promise the electorate everything imaginable, from world peace to economic prosperity. Our present-day presidents are prohibited by their political handlers from speaking the truth, especially the truth of the Gospel, lest they ruffle the feathers of some truth-hating ballot holder whose support is deemed indispensable in some upcoming election. Today’s presidency is more about political expediency—what’s best for the Republican or Democratic Party—than it is about patriotism—what’s best for the United States of America.
In all honesty, the American people have no one to blame but themselves for our country’s current crop of conniving politicians. If the truth be told, the vast majority of Americans would never vote for a candidate who told them the truth. Theodore Roosevelt would have no hope of being elected president in today’s America, neither does any candidate who preaches biblical morality to his fellow-countrymen or holds up Christ as the only hope and Savior of the world. For this reason, neither our current president nor any candidate running for the presidency is willing to blow for our nation a certain and distinct sound upon the trumpet of the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 14:7-9).
America’s living past presidents, as well as our current president and presidential candidates, all profess to be Christians. Yet, each contradicts their Christian profession by denying cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. Take our current Commander-in-Chief for example. He has been dubbed “the evangelical president,” because of his identification with evangelical Christians. Yet, he claims to believe in “universality”; that is, that “all the world, [regardless of] whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same universal God.” If you ask me, President Bush sounds more like a Unitarian than an evangelical and his beliefs sound more like Unity Village than the Bible Belt.
In spite of the fact that his public policies and private life belied his profession, former President Bill Clinton professed to be a church-attending, Bible-toting Christian. While president, Clinton’s administration condemned Southern Baptists—Clinton’s denomination at the time—for targeting members of false religions for prayer and evangelism. According to Clinton’s White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, Clinton viewed such efforts on the part of his denomination to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission as acts of “intolerance” that were motivated by “ancient religious hatred.”
How can Bill Clinton, someone who continues to condemn his former denomination for propagating the Christian faith, be an actual adherent of the Christian faith? Likewise, how can his wife, who admits to being unsure “of the doctrine that being a Christian is the only way to salvation,” be a true believer in Him who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6)?
During her run for the White House, Hillary Clinton claimed to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. She went on, however, to explain in an article in the New York Times that her belief in the resurrection should not be misinterpreted as excluding from Heaven all of those who deny Christ’s resurrection or adhere to other religious faiths. Unlike the Apostle Paul, not to mention all true Christians down through the ages, Senator Clinton doesn’t believe that Christ’s resurrection proves His claims to be both the Son of God and the only way to God (Romans 1:4). Instead, she professes to believe in the resurrection’s historicity, but not in its spiritual significance and eternal consequence (Romans 10:9-10).
I guess Jimmy Carter was the first modern-day president to call himself a “born again” Christian. Despite his claim, Carter has repeatedly proven his second-birth to be spiritually illegitimate. He has defended the beliefs of cultists and condemned the preaching of the gospel to them as proselytizing. He has renounced his former denomination (Southern Baptist) for holding to the inerrancy of Scripture, for believing that salvation is by faith in Christ alone, for condemning homosexuality as sexual immorality and for staunchly opposing abortion. Carter has even written a book—“Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis”—that faults the Christian fundamentalism of his former denomination for causing our nation’s current woes and jeopardizing its future.
To counteract the perceived threat of legitimate Christians to our country, Carter has launched a counter movement of illegitimate Christians like himself. He calls his new liberal brand of Baptists the “New Baptist Covenant.” According to Carter, the purpose of the “New Baptist Covenant” is to “persuade conservative Southern Baptists and other Christians to end divisions over the Bible.” In other words, to stop insisting upon sound doctrine, which Carter and his bunch cannot endure, and join Carter and the itching ear crowd in the former president’s new “Church of What’s Happening Now” (2 Timothy 4:3).
It appears that the Oval Office will soon be occupied by another “cloud without rain” (Jude 12); that is, by another politician who claims to be a Christian while personally denying the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. If John McCain is elected president, we’ll have a man occupying the Oval Office who once called evangelical leaders “agents of intolerance” and advised his own political party to rid itself of the “evil influence” of Christian fundamentalists.
More recently, McCain has rejected the endorsements of a couple of evangelical ministers because of their outspoken opposition to Islam and Roman Catholicism, the world’s two largest false religions. In addition, McCain has repudiated as “deeply offensive and indefensible” the suggestion by one of these ministers that a sovereign God can even use an Adolf Hitler to bring about divine plans and purposes; specifically, the return of the Jews to Palestine and the rebirth of the nation of Israel.
In an effort to safeguard himself from being further “soiled” by evangelical endorsements, McCain has issued a blanket renunciation of all evangelicals who have ever made a negative comment about anything. I guess this narrows down the number of televangelists that McCain is willing to welcome aboard his “Straight Talk Express” to Robert Schuller, the “possibility thinker” who refuses to say anything negative. As an evangelical myself, I can’t help but feel that we ought to be washing our hands of John McCain rather than John McCain washing his hands of us. It’s we who are being soiled by our association with politicians, not vice versa.
The only way for John McCain to be elected president is for him to stumble into the White House over his clumsy attempts at courting evangelical voters. No matter how hard the good senator tries to woo us, he always ends up whacking us. He just can’t help himself. On the other hand, if Barack Obama becomes our next president, he’ll slide into the White House on some slick oratory and smooth-sounding “spiritualese.” While he is every bit as hostile to the genuine Christian faith as Senator McCain, Obama is capable of snuggling up to us without having to take a swing at us. Unlike McCain, Obama can flash us a big smile without showing us his huge fangs.
According to Senator Obama, he is a “Christian” who believes that there are “many paths to the same place” for all who believe in “a higher power.” Now, the “place” that Mr. Obama speaks of as the ultimate destiny of all higher power devotees is not necessarily Heaven. The good senator admits that he is unsure of the existence of a literal Heaven. He is certain, however, that there is no literal Hell. A belief in Hell, he says, is “just not part of [his] religious makeup.” The key word here is “makeup,” for the “Christianity” Mr. Obama espouses is obviously not the historic Christian faith, but a made-up variety concocted by a highly imaginative politician and customized to fit his political aspirations.
Cathleen Falsani, a religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, acutely observed after interviewing Mr. Obama that his insistence “that all people of faith—Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone—know the same God” is a most “unlikely theological position for someone who places his faith squarely at the feet of Jesus.” In other words, there’s simply no way that one can square the tailored tenets of Obama’s so-called Christian faith with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
How can Barack Obama be a true disciple of Jesus Christ when he goes around denying and denouncing Christ’s teachings? Whereas Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me,” Barack Obama says that there are many ways to God and it doesn't matter which one you choose. Whereas Jesus warned all who refuse to believe in Him of Hell, Barack Obama insists that unbelievers have nothing to worry about, since Jesus was either lying or mistaken about the actual existence of a place of eternal torment.
Barack Obama describes his fanciful Christian faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions. Unlike traditional Christianity, which Mr. Obama bemoans for its “call to evangelize and proselytize,” the good senator’s faith is strictly a personal and private affair. Although he has no qualms about parading it in public in hopes of bolstering his political career, he would never dream of preaching it to others in hopes of converting them to Christ.
The religious ruse that Mr. Obama is attempting to perpetrate upon our populace is easily detected by those who listen carefully to what the good senator says. For instance, in his much ballyhooed speech before the Call to Renewal conference in 2006, Obama said, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religious-specific, values.” To put it more concisely, Obama believes that the only religion acceptable in a democracy is one that is offensive to no faith and universally acceptable to all faiths. It is a faith within which sound doctrine and sincere convictions are set aside for the sake of ecumenical goodwill.
That Mr. Obama has a kumbaya faith flexible enough to appease democracy’s multiple religions is unquestionable. What is equally unquestionable, however, is that Barack Obama has no faith at all in Him who said: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:34-38).
All across America today the Gospel message—salvation by God’s grace through faith in God’s Son—is being compromised by people who profess to be cross-carrying followers of Christ. From pulpit to pulpit and from church house to church house, false prophets are preaching a ecumenical gospel, a gospel devoid of the power of salvation and designed to produce mollification. Yet, no modern-day pulpit is guiltier of diluting the Gospel of Jesus Christ than the bully pulpit. Whether we’re talking about presidents or presidential candidates, modern-day Americans are receiving a steady diet of biblical distortions and spiritual deception from today’s bully pulpit. 
