Rick Warren Makes a Good Point About the Role of Faith in Politics, Then Ruins it with Anti-Atheist Bigotry

During an interview on Larry King Live last night, prominent Evangelical pastor Rick Warren made a great distinction about the role of faith in politics:

I believe in the separation of church and state, but I do not believe in the separation of faith and politics, because faith is simply a worldview, and everybody’s got a worldview.

He then went on to include atheists in the list of people that have worldviews, too bad those worldviews don’t count for him:

I couldn’t vote for a person who was an atheist, because I would think — I think the presidency is a job too big for one person. I would think there’s a little arrogance that says, I don’t need anybody else. I could vote for someone of different religions than mine, but I don’t know that I could personally vote for somebody who denies that we need somebody greater than ourselves to help us.

Rick Warren has a right to believe that certain worldviews are better than others. It’s something we all do in our own way. It’s a sad sorry state of affairs that there is not enough support for nonbelievers in this country to support a protest of that position by Mr. Warren by either political candidate.

I wonder how Obama and McCain would answer that question.

Video of Warren after the jump: