John Edwards recently sat for an interview with belief.net, and had the following to say about the distinction between public expression of religious belief and the expression of religious preference by public leaders:

Would it be your hope that a John Edwards Supreme Court would allow public schools to encourage more prayer in schools?

What I’m not in favor of is for a teacher to go to the front of the classroom and lead the class in prayer. Because I think that by definition means that that teacher’s faith is being imposed on children who will almost certainly come from different faith beliefs. Allowing time for children to pray for themselves, to themselves, I think is not only okay, I think it’s a good thing.

What do you think about Ten Commandments being displayed in local courthouses?

I guess I’ve been in courthouses where I’ve seen the Ten Commandments. I’ve never had a strong reaction to it. I do think that it’s the same issue. How would Muslims feel if they went into that courthouse, and how would people of other faiths feel, Hindus, others feel, if they were in the same circumstance?

So I’m sensitive to that. You know, of course it wouldn’t offend me because I’m Christian. And I’m certainly not offended by the idea of expressing faith in that circumstance. But probably it causes more trouble than good.

President Bush, obviously, has talked a lot about empowering faith-based organizations. Vice President Gore during the 2000 campaign talked about it. Yet, there’s been a lot of hostility from the Democratic Party about the idea of using faith-based groups. Would an Edwards presidency see aid to faith-based groups expanded?

Well, I’ll tell you what I have seen, first, as the foundation for what I believe.

In the last few years, I have been all over the country going to Community Action centers, faith-based local organizations who are providing help to the poor because of my work on the issue of poverty. And there are a lot of places in America that, without faith-based groups there is no support for the poor. It’s just that simple. And [the poor] would not survive without the existence of good, effective faith-based organizations.

Before I ever got in politics, I served on the board of Urban Ministries in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is a group set up by a consortium of churches. So I know how important faith-based groups are.

So the answer is I think is that in an Edwards presidency faith-based groups, I believe, could be used. But I think it is also tricky business. I think you have to be careful about how you implement it for all of the separation of church and state issues, because you don’t want discrimination. You don’t want federal money going to any organization, including a faith-based group, that’s discriminating. So, you have to be very careful about that.

And then secondly, I would just be concerned from what I’ve seen practically about the burden that comes with getting federal dollars–you’re going to have accountability, you’re going to have audit systems, and you just need to be certain that the faith-based groups are prepared for that, because I think some are not. And that’s not the way in which they’re used to operating, and I think it could cause a lot of trouble and cause a lot of disenchantment.

But, the bottom line is, if you can work through these problems, I think there is a great potential delivery system there.

Who is John Edwards speaking to here? Does Edwards succeed in balancing atop the wall separating church and state, or has he fallen off? In my opinion, he succeeds here by establishing his own very religious grounding, but at the same time emphasizing the need for government to stay out of promoting religion. What’s your take?