DENVER (ABP) — Forty-five years to the day after a Baptist preacher shamed America into living up to its own creed, Barack Obama cited the epistle to the Hebrews in becoming the first African-American to accept a major party’s presidential nomination Aug. 28.
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“America, we cannot turn back; we cannot walk alone,” the Illinois senator said, speaking to an estimated 85,000 revelers in a football stadium on the closing night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. “At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise — that American promise — and, in the words of Scripture, ‘hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.’”
Obama’s speech came on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington. Obama’s rhetoric, subtly echoing King’s in calling America to fulfill its promise, culminated one of the most faith-soaked Democratic conventions in recent memory.
Convention events included party-sponsored forums featuring many evangelical, Catholic and other religious leaders discussing the proper intersection of religion and politics, regular references to religious voters by convention speakers and plenary sessions that opened and closed with prayers from leaders such as evangelical author Donald Miller and megachurch pastor Joel Hunter.
In fact, religion was so prominent in Denver that some advocates for strong church-state separation expressed doubts about the Democrats’ methods.
“You and I know that being a public figure doesn't mean denying your faith or beliefs. But in America, it does mean not imposing them on anyone else, and it means part of your job is preserving the boundaries between religion and government, to protect the integrity of both,” said Interfaith Alliance President Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister, in an Aug. 28 e-mail to supporters.
Obama’s acceptance speech featured a laundry list of specific policy goals and promises and generous dollops of the nominee’s signature lofty rhetoric.
“We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight,” he said, alluding to increasingly unpopular Bush administration economic and foreign-policy policies. “The fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that is the promise we need to keep. That is the change that we need right now.”
Obama focused on many long-standing Democratic priorities — such as universal healthcare and reduced dependence on fossil fuels. He also gave a nod to middle-ground solutions to contentious social debates.
“What has also been lost [in American political debate] is our sense of common purpose — and that’s what we have to restore,” he said. “We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country…. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and live lives free of discrimination.”
The event also featured the nomination of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as Obama’s vice-presidential running mate. Biden, a practicing Catholic, has drawn fire from some traditionalist Catholics because he supports keeping abortion legal.
“Barack Obama has re-opened a wound among American Catholics by picking a pro-abortion Catholic politician,” said Brian Burch, president of Fidelis, a conservative Catholic group, in a statement on the Biden pick. “The American bishops have made clear that Catholic political leaders must defend the dignity of every human person, including the unborn. Sadly, Joe Biden's tenure in the United States Senate has been marked by steadfast support for legal abortion.”
But in Denver, many Christians — including some who describe themselves as Republicans — focused on other moral issues. In a benediction to end the convention, Hunter asked for God’s wisdom for voters and the candidates.
“Almighty God, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us a reverence for all life. Give us a compassion for the most vulnerable among us — the babies, the children, the poor, the sick, the enslaved, the persecuted. For all of those who have been left out of the advantaged world,” he said.
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