Leadership Quote by David E. Price

A politician invoking God while warning against weaponizing Him is doing a delicate bit of rhetorical aikido. David E. Price’s line is built to sound devout without sounding domineering: it affirms a religious frame (“seek God’s will”) and then immediately slaps the wrist of anyone tempted to turn that frame into a partisan cudgel (“never presuming to identify it with our own program or power”). The structure matters. He grants moral seriousness, then narrows the moral claim so it can’t be cashed out as “therefore, my bill is holy.”

The intent is partly personal piety, partly institutional hygiene. In a political ecosystem where “God is on our side” is a familiar shortcut to certainty, Price chooses humility as a governing posture. That’s not just theology; it’s coalition language. It signals to religious voters that faith is welcome, and to secular or pluralist audiences that faith won’t be used as a loophole to bypass debate, evidence, or consent.

The subtext is a critique of Christian nationalism and the general tendency of power to baptize itself. “Program” and “power” are telltale words: he’s not warning against having convictions; he’s warning against confusing the divine with the machinery of winning. It’s also a preemptive defense against the cynical read of religion in politics as pure branding. By insisting on the distance between God and his agenda, Price tries to reclaim moral vocabulary without claiming moral ownership.

Contextually, it fits the late-20th/early-21st century American terrain: culture-war certainty on one side, suspicion of religious rhetoric on the other. He’s threading the needle by making humility sound like strength.