Condoleezza Rice worked as the secretary of state under the Presidency of George W. Bush, and much like her boss, she was often criticised for a sometimes puzzling mix of public service and Christian faith.
Rice has always been very upfront about her Christian faith which she says was shaped and formed in the furnace of growing up experiencing racial tensions and as a daughter of a Presbyterian minister. In an interview with Sarah Pulliam Bailey, the online editor of Christianity Today, Rice explains a little about exactly how faith did impact her role as a public servant.
Bailey: Did the racial tensions you experienced as a child have any impact on your faith?
Rice: The church was so much the center of our lives in Birmingham, the center on Sunday, the center on Tuesday, the center on Thursday. I don't know that any of us could have gotten through that period without tremendous faith.
Bailey: Before you worked in government, did you feel like God was directing you toward public service?
Rice: I don't think somehow intellectually that God said, Okay, you're going to quit piano and become a Soviet specialist. It's a combination of circumstances and making choices, but I've always tried to seek guidance. I think I've been much more capable of dealing with ambiguity and what might come in the future as a result of faith.
Bailey: In the past you said you worry about the government trying to legislate morality, and you know that evangelicals care very much about the issue of abortion.
Rice: I'm generally pretty libertarian in these matters, because Americans are quite good, actually, at finding a way to deal with these extremely divisive and difficult moral issues. And it's not that I'm a relativist. It's not that I believe everybody has their own morality. But I do understand that there are different ways of thinking about how these issues are going to play out in people's lives, and I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt in governing their own lives. Sometimes when things are out of whack the government has no choice but to step in. But I'm wary of the government stepping in to too many issues.
Bailey: Was there a time when you came to a place on that issue, where your faith informed your position on abortion?
Rice: I'm still coming to terms with it. I don't like the government involved in these really hard moral decisions. While I don't think the country is ready for legislation to overturn Roe v. Wade, certainly I cannot imagine why one would be in favor of partial birth abortion. I also can't imagine why one would take these decisions out of the hands of the family. We all understand that this is not something to be taken lightly.
Bailey: Same-sex marriage is another issue that has captured the country's attention in recent years.
Rice: I have lots of respect for people on both sides of this divide, because there are really hard issues. I don't ever want anybody to be denied rights within our country. I happen to think marriage is between a man and a woman. That's tradition, and I believe that that's the right answer. But perhaps we will decide that there needs to be some way for people to express their desire to live together through civil union. I think the country, if we can keep the volume down, will come to good answers.
Bailey: When Hillary Clinton talks about her faith, she says, "I don't wear it on my sleeve." How do you talk about faith as a public figure?
Rice: There are very few people who don't know that I'm Christian. I don't have any desire to hide it or to say you don't need to know that about me. I also recognize that it's not something that one talks about in every sentence that you utter, because then people start to mischaracterize and start to caricature those of us who are Christian. You really want to know me? You need to know that I'm a devout Christian. But I'm not going to lecture you about it on a daily basis.
Bailey: You said you had theological debates with your father: "We exchanged views on everything from the teachings of Paul, about which my father had some reservations, to the horrors of Revelation." Do you still wrestle with some of the Bible's teachings and its theological implications?
Rice: Sure. The Bible is at the core of our faith, and it's the core of my faith. Yet I can remember particularly wrestling with the relationship between the God of retribution, anger, and judgment in the Old Testament and the God of redemption and grace in the New Testament. Since I'm a Christian, the birth of Jesus Christ explains that link. We all struggle with some of the representations of women in the Bible, and yet I know and find remarkable that at the beginning of the faith, Christ's resurrection, it's women who are chosen to tell the first story.
Bailey: How does your understanding of religion help you deal with the interplay between religion and foreign policy?
Rice: It helps to have both a historical and theological understanding of the children of Abraham and the relationships between Muslims, Jews, and Christians. I personally think that Israel is remarkable. It would not exist but for the toughness of the people and the grace of God. Yet Jerusalem is a place where the great religions don't so much come together; they clash there. You suddenly realize the extent to which man will go to use God for his own purposes rather than the other way around. That for me is the most terrifying thing about the combination of religion and politics, because that is really when man is trying to use God for his own purposes. That's why I don't see any conflict with being Christian and wanting to see a Jewish state, being Christian and believing there can be a Palestinian state, because the state is the state. When you start to try to infuse it with God's purpose you almost always get in trouble.
Bailey: How do you distinguish between someone who's trying to use God for his purposes and when the person feels like God is speaking to him or her?
Rice: I'm always careful with people who assume God is speaking through them. It proves out over time, because essentially if God is speaking through you to put other people down I rather doubt it. That's not the God I know. And if God is speaking through you to hold yourself above others or your own kind above others then I doubt it.