I attended Pentecost Sunday services at New York’s Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the liturgy was, in general, lovely and uplifting. But the sermon, by the Very Rev. James Kowalski, was a case in point of why politics should be avoided in the pulpit. It being Pentecost, the first reading was from Acts 2, about the apostles speaking in tongues yet being understood by visitors from around the world in all their own particular languages. Reverend Kowalski used this as a springboard for a discussion of how the Holy Spirit can enable believers to understand other people, the Other as Other–to hear what the Other means as opposed to what he or she seems to be saying. So far, so good. But the example Reverend Kowalski used to illustrate this was . . . Newsweek’s recent cover story about how Iran doesn’t really want nuclear weapons. Now, I have no interest per se in fanning war hysteria vis-a-vis Iran–maybe there’s something to be said for patience and negotiations etc. etc.–but I think this sermon was liberal wishful thinking at its worst. Sometimes, when people say things like, they want to destroy Israel and push it into the sea, what they really mean is . . . that they want to destroy Israel and push it into the sea. The old wisdom tells us that the clergy should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable: This was the opposite, a comforting of the comfortable. What chance is there, after all, that an Upper West Side congregation is in danger of excessive warmongering about Iran?

And, lest anybody dismiss my knocking of this sermon as right-wing partisan hackery, I should point that I am equally offended by the use of a church sermon as an opportunity to attack President Obama. (This is so even if the preacher thinks he is being clever by not naming Obama, and just mocking people for saying “yes we can” and desiring “hope and change.”) Priests and ministers are, of course, entitled to their political opinions, but people go to church to hear the Good News about Jesus Christ, not the Bad News about (depending on the preacher’s bias) George W. Bush or Barack Obama.