When evangelical leaders can persuade the president to be concerned about what's happening in Sudan, or sex trafficking around the world, or HIV-AIDS, that's a very good thing. I am completely supportive of that.

The failure of political leaders to help uplift the poor will be judged a moral failure.

The Christian doctrine is one that is both about individual spirituality and a parallel commitment to social justice.

But what does it mean to be on God's side? I believe it starts with focusing on the common good - not just in politics, but in all the decisions we make in our personal, family, vocational, financial, communal, and, public lives. That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths - love your neighbor as yourself - still the most transformational ethic in history.

The world will not change until we do

But when we place God on our side of things, that we are now ridding the world of evil - that's very dangerous, that one nation has this role to rid the world of evil. What about the evil we have committed, that we are complicit in?

If the president is going to use so much language of theology and the Bible, then let's use that language for a serious discussion about the war in Iraq. And that was never done.