Café Philos: an internet café

Until Tuesday, former Senator Fred Thompson was feeling out his chances of gaining the Republican nomination for president.

That was before Pope James excommunicated him from Christianity, thus considerably diminishing the conservative Thompson's chances of being nominated.

Pope James -- who was known by the name of James Dobson before ascending to the Evangelical Papacy at the behest of God -- excommunicated Thompson in an unsolicited phone call to U.S. News senior editor Dan Gilgoff, rather than through a formal papal bull, thus demonstrating how confidently he takes his new powers as pope of the evangelicals.

According to Gilgoff's article on the excommunication, Pope James said during the phone call:

"Everyone knows he's conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for," Dobson said of Thompson. "[But] I don't think he's a Christian; at least that's my impression," Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party's conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

This didn't sit well with Thompson, whose spokesman, Mark Corallo, took issue with the Pope's excommunication of the former Senator: "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."

Nevertheless, Pope James is sticking with the excommunication for now.

In a follow up phone call to his Vatican (Formerly known as the "Focus on the Family" headquarters), Pope James' spokesman, Gary Schneeberger, said to senior editor Gilgoff, "...that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless 'has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.' "

Schneeberger then added, "We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians".

Pope James' actions raise the question of whether he now intends to excommunicate all non-evangelical Christians from the Christian faith, or just those non-evangelicals who run for high public office. Whatever the case, the Pope's actions should make wary any non-evangelicals who still feel they have a natural ally in the new Pope.