OneNewsNow is reporting that "senior Army strategist and Pentagon advisor" Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) "doesn't think evangelist Franklin Graham would've been disinvited to speak at a prayer event in Washington, DC, if George W. Bush were still in the White House."

That may well be true as a tactical political point, but it seems crucial to recognize a deeper stragetic factor at work. As I noted recently on Facebook, "Obama, the Democrats, and secularists despise Christianity and view it as merely a belief system 'of faith' where people go through their motions based on mere 'values' and goosebumps you get while singing 2nd-rate music.

"Unfortunately, much Christian cultural and political engagement parallels this weak, unbiblical concept of truth. Unfortunately, not a few churches preach and practice a kind of spirituality that reduces God to feelings, personal values, and a nonjudgmental self-help Guru in the sky.

"The information and approach we have in the Bible is totally different. Here trust is rooted in fact, God is a public figure, faith is not feeling, and ethics are not confused with 'values.' Whole people are expected to make wise decisions in light of evidential and rational truth about the real world, history, science, the human being, and so on. Evidence, not goosebumps, informs us about the facticity of whether a real Jesus rose from the dead in space and time.

"In this regard, 'Christmas Spirit in the Dirt' may be of interest. Link: http://www.pearceyreport.com/archives/2007/12/christmas_spiri.php

"If Christian 'faith' is merely a private value system or belief system, then of course it has no place in public life, for public life is where truth belongs, including the truth of facts.

"But if -- as the biblical information emphasizes -- there is a Creator who has acted and spoken in history in ways that can be verified evidentially and rationally, and which therefore is public, then of course it makes all the sense in world to give heed to what the Creator says and does. He might just know what he's talking about, and the truth he communicates, and practices, might just set a people, a culture, and a person free.

"Obama and the Democrats couldn't be happier with the 'people of faith' approach so in vogue in certain circles. For it represents preemptive surrender. Keeping Graham out of the Pentagon prayer is simply secularists taking advantage of a teachable moment, agreeing that, yes, you Christians should keep your private 'faith' in your private spiritual closet.

"If you want real humane change in our culture and politics and churches, begin acting on the information that God is a public figure and that privatized spiritual closets are too small for human beings created in his image to be free. Secular belief systems will do everything in their power to keep you locked inside. They will encourage you as a mere 'person of faith.' The humane and loving thing to do, however, is to resist and overcome.

"You might think of it as wholistic discipleship. Discipleship has always been about recovering our full humanity -- for a life of creativity, love, and truth in community with God and our fellow man. Discipleship has always been too big for mere religion, and it has never fit inside the confines of a secularistically defined prayer closet.

"In essence, the secularists have just told Graham to remain a 'person of faith' safe and sound inside a privatized religiosity not relevant to the real world of the Pentagon. In contrast, the evidentially verifiable Creator says to go out into all the world. Whether America listens to the secularists or the Creator will make all the difference in the world."