The Theologian Dean

Rob, I take all of Howard Dean's claims about religion that you posted, except for one, to be civil claims about how the government or the society should behave concerning religion or toward people of different religions.  The obvious theological claim -- obviously taking a position on religious truth claims -- is that "there are no bars to heaven for anybody."  Yes, that's a First Amendment howler: it reflects, as Mike McConnell once nicely put it, not the disestablishment of religion, but the establishment of Unitarian-Universalism.  But were you thinking that some of Dean's other claims were inappropriately theological too?  I can see reading the claim "everybody in this room ought to be comfortable being an American Jew, not just an American" as a theological claim that Judaism should be in harmony with Americanism, but in context it seems to me best read as simply a claim that no one should be disfavored in civil status or civil settings because s/he is a Jew.  Certainly some of the other claims, even if they are about civil status or governmental settings, could well be wrong (for example, individually initiated prayers at a football game may in many contexts be protected even if they make someone "cringe"); but can any of them be fairly characterized as (inappropriately) theological rather than (appropriately even if erroneously) civil?

Tom