Dallas, USA - It was the last question of the day, the kind of rabbit punch that good journalists like to throw at a disarming moment in the hope of catching someone off guard.
"We have arguments about whether we're a Christian nation. ... How do you advise your congregants?" Gayle White, a religion reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, asked Bishop T.D. Jakes.
The black evangelist - whom Time magazine called "one of religion's most prodigious polymaths" - had been invited to be the speaker at a plenary session of the National Association of Black Journalists to talk about the growing influence of black mega-churches.
The Potter's House, Jakes' non-denominational church in Dallas, has more than 30,000 members. But his influence reaches well beyond the walls of his church. In fact, he was in Atlanta last week to lead MegaFest, a four-day Christian conference that drew well over 100,000 people.
It is Jakes' super-pastor standing that makes his answer to the question so important. "I don't think we are a Christian nation," he said. "And I don't think we were meant to be."
In saying this, Jakes - whose appeal crosses racial and ethnic lines - put himself at loggerheads with those on the religious right who claim that this nation is a Christian state and who clamor for politicians to follow their lead. Their push for government action to allow school prayer, and for the federal government to fund just abstinence-only sex education programs and to ban gay marriages, is rooted in their belief that this country's government is a secular instrument of their religion.
Jakes, on the other hand, sees a clear distinction between his ministry and the role of the ministers of this nation's government. "As we continue to try to politicize God, or market God, or say that America is Christian, or that God is with one (political) party, or that God is here and not there, it only further points to the fact that we don't understand how big God is - and how great God is," he said.
Jakes has been wooed by people on both sides of the widening religious and political divide over the role of Christian beliefs in this nation's governance, but he has tried mightily to rise above this debate. He pastors, he says, to both Democrats and Republicans.
His Potter's House church has not aligned itself with either party, as some churches have done. His sermons aren't thinly veiled rallies for the political right or left. While he has counseled
President Bush and befriended the Rev.
Jesse Jackson, Jakes has tried to be his own man.
By saying that the United States is not a Christian nation, Jakes has, consciously or unconsciously, taken a position on one of the most contentious issues in this country - a position that has taken him out of the stands and put him in the middle of the playing field of this debate.
Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to think that we can now pigeonhole this man, who some have called "the black Billy Graham." In response to a question put to him earlier by someone from his audience of black journalists, Jakes gave an answer that will disappoint the religious left.
"To date, I have not seen scriptural authority that allows me to stand on behalf of God and say I now pronounce you husband and husband, and wife and wife," Jakes said when asked about his willingness to perform gay marriages. "This is an issue the government is undecided about. The Bible is not."
Jakes' non-partisan religious views are refreshing. I don't agree with all that he says, but I celebrate his refusal to join the ranks of the church zealots of the left or right, or to blindly align himself with those politicians who pander to them.
That's a good thing. And so, too, is the prospect that T.D. Jakes might lead the way back to that old-time religion - a period when the separation of church and state was not such a noxious idea to so many Christian leaders.