Dr. Ben Carson was left out of a Christian pastors' conference earlier this year in part because his own religious beliefs deviated too much from Christian orthodoxy.
The snub was ironic in hindsight, as Carson is now under fire for saying over the weekend that he didn't believe a Muslim should be President of the United States because his or her religious beliefs would be in conflict with the Constitution.
Willy Rice, the pastor of Florida-based Calvary Baptist Church, invited the retired neurosurgeon to speak at the Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference earlier this year. The invite for the June conference came before Carson was a declared Republican presidential candidate.
However, several organizations and individuals within the Southern Baptist community publicly expressed their displeasure with having Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist, address the conference. Those complaints, in addition to Carson's expected presidential campaign launch, led Carson and the conference organizers to mutually agree to not have him speak at the event.
Funny, isn't it? This particular Christian bigot isn't Christian enough for other Christian bigots.
This is why we have the separation between church and state. This is why there's no religious test for any political office in America, why there's no state religion, why our founders wrote into the Constitution of the United States that your religious beliefs, if any, are your own fucking business, no one else's. (I'm paraphrasing a bit.)
You know something. In my entire life - my adult life, at least - no president has ever shared my own opinions about religion. Not a single one. So what? In presidential elections, we're not voting for pope. We're electing the secular leader of a secular country.
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