God has not endorsed either candidate, sorry.

DAVENPORT, Iowa  - A minister delivering the invocation at John McCain's rally in Davenport, Iowa Saturday told the crowd non-Christian religions around the world were praying for Barack Obama to win the U.S. presidential election.

"There are millions of people around this world praying to their god-whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah-that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens," said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport.

The remark was made before McCain arrived at the rally but the Republican nominee's campaign quickly put out a statement distancing itself from the remarks.

"While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama's judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief," said McCain campaign spokesperson Wendy Riemann.

This incident comes a day after a Minnesota voter asked Senator McCain if Barack Obama was an Arab at a town hall in Lakeville, Minnesota and just three days after Lehigh GOP County Chairman Bill Platt made a speech at a McCain rally in Pennsylvania where he refered to the Democrat nominee for president as Barack Hussein Obama.

One more time: do not claim that God is for or against either candidate in the U.S. presidential election in November. God has not, to my knowledge, declared his preference in this matter. Jesus was a community organizer, among other things. Sorry, just kidding. But really, you can read the Bible to support or undermine either candidate. We need, as Lincoln once said, to stop claiming that God is on our side, and start working to make sure that we are on his side.

That's the big picture. In the small picture, McCain is left walking a tightrope here between whipping up a bit of xenophobia (Obama as unpatriotic "other"- then let the imagination fill in the blank with muslim, terrorist) then stepping in to tone it down ("No maam, he is not an Arab").

Sure, there are genuine political issues here. Of course Obama is pro-choice, which enrages persons who had hoped that McCain's next supreme court appointee might put the nail in Roe v Wade's coffin. Yes, Obama in his career has been willing to hang out with people who have done or said wrong things in their lives (sort of like Jesus?). This is partly a matter of chance and partly a matter of style. Yes, Obama lived in Indonesia for several years as a young child, until his mother yanked him back to Hawaii (where he was born, by the way) at age 10. Apparently mom wanted him to grow up American: she was increasingly concerned that Indonesia was a nation that did not prize the rule of law and she did not want that value system to rub off on her son. Yes Obama has several half siblings in Kenya from his Dad's other marriage, and a half sister that his mom had with her second husband, in indonesia. Rather than making him foreign, it actually makes him more qualified to understand America's leadership role in the world (granted that sentence was entirely my opinion, not objective fact). But make up your own mind on this. Do not ask your minister how you should vote, it's your job not his.  

By the way, one more time, Obama is not a Muslim and never has been. Until his twenties he was sort of a lapsed Christian, and then he had an epiphany and has been a churchgoing Christian for the past twenty years or so. So foreigners may be excited about the idea of an American president who looks like them, but they are not going to get a non-Christian out of the deal.