Bush Redux: On How Not to Invite the President (or, Those Crazy Nazarenes!)
One of the default responses to President Bush’s presence at Calvin was the passive reply, “Who could say ‘No’ to the President of the United States?” (Part of the fuzziness of the discussion here was the fact that, apparently, the White House has a practice of soliciting invitations. I guess one gets an elbow in the rib at a dinner party and a White House official let’s it slip that, Hey, you know, the President wouldn’t mind being invited to Calvin College (wink, wink). Then one extends an invitation–which means that one RSVPs to the invitation to extend an invitation.)
Anyway, in response to the question, I usually replied: “Well, I don’t think Goshen College would have participated in the process or extended the invitation.” But leave it to my Nazarene friends to provide a concrete case. A new friend and fellow traveller Pastor John Wright has just blogged about how the Nazarene General Assembly did just what folks here thought unthinkable: they ‘dis-invited’ the President (or, perhaps more properly, the declined the invitation to extend an invitation).
This almost makes up for James Dobson…
