Well, the next best thing: George Bush.

The Canadian Evangelical Left has blocked former President George W. Bush from speaking at evangelical Tyndale University in Toronto, deriding him as a virtual war criminal.

An online petition by faculty and students, fueled by reporting by the Toronto Star, evidently ensured the event’s cancellation last month. One Tyndale professor, in his own anti-Bush op-ed, implicitly accused the former president of “blasphemy” and “heresy’ for daring to have employed scriptural language in citations of dreaded American exceptionalism during his administration.

Apparently, Dr. Arthur Paul Boers is heartbroken over the absence of careful deliberation, discernment or debate about the arrogant theological actions and assertions of George W. Bush. If only Bush had attended Tyndale University, he would, no doubt, have emerged with his theology conformed to the received leftist Tyndale dogma, whereupon he would have metamorphosed into Jimmy Carter and given interviews to Playboy to discuss lust instead of invading Iraq.

Perhaps Boers and Bush could come to an agreement: Bush is not a theologian, so he will cease all theological utterances and Boers is not a politician (thank God), so he will keep his nose out of politics, confining himself to mystical mutterings in the comfort of his sacerdotal ivory tower.