WASHINGTON (ABP) — Speaking to a group of Christians rallying in Washington, a possible contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination said it's time for progressives and liberals to talk about faith, but only if they can speak authentically.
“Nothing's worse than inauthentic expressions of faith,” said Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), addressing a conference of about 600 Christian anti-poverty activists June 28.
He said Democrats and other progressives have dropped the ball in dealing with voters motivated by faith. “I think it's time we join the debate about how to reconcile serious faith with our pluralistic society,” he said.
Obama, currently the only African-American in the Senate, related a story from the 2004 campaign when he was first elected. His Republican opponent, conservative Catholic Alan Keyes, was quoted as saying that “Jesus Christ would not vote” for Obama, he said.
“I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously … and since at this point I was 40 points up in the polls, it was not a bad piece of strategic advice,” Obama said.
He ended up giving a standard Democratic response. “I said we are living in a pluralistic society and I can't impose” religious beliefs on others, Obama said. “I said 'I am running for United States senator from Illinois — not minister of Illinois.'”
But, he said, “Mr. Keyes' implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me. I was also aware that my answer did not adequately address the role that my faith has in guiding my own values and beliefs.”
Such answers, when given by progressives, can often deafen the ears of evangelical and other voters with deep religious motivations, he said — leaving Republicans to define the two major political parties in terms of faith-friendliness.
“Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait,” Obama continued. “At times, we try to avoid the conversation about religion altogether, afraid to offend anyone. At worst, there are some who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant [and perpetuate] a caricature of religious Americans.
Such strategies for avoidance of the issue may work for progressives when our opponent is Alan Keyes. But, over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people's lives.”
Obama said such acknowledgement must be authentic — not done merely when Democratic politicians show up in African-American churches at election time.
“I'm not suggesting that all progressives suddenly latch on to religious terminology — that can be dangerous. Nothing's worse than inauthentic expressions of faith,” he said. “In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have somebody who is rounded in morality and ethics and who is also secular affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending they're something they're not.”
Obama, who is active in Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, spoke from experience. He said he grew up in a religiously skeptical household but began to understand Christianity when he went to work for a church-based non-profit group in Chicago after college and was embraced by Christians who helped him recognize that people have doubts because people need forgiveness. Eventually, he said, he made a profession of faith.
“It was precisely because of these doubts that I was able to walk down the aisle of the Trinity United Church of Christ,” Obama said. “But, kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's Spirit beckoning me.”
Other progressives who have authentic religious beliefs and motivations ought not be afraid to share them — or let them directly shape their policy goals,” he said.
“The problem of poverty, and racism, the uninsured and unemployed … are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect 10-point plan. They are rooted both in societal indifference and individual callousness. They are rooted in the ruthlessness of man,” he said.
“To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public-policy debates is a practical absurdity,” he continued. “If we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that religious and secular people share.”
Obama pointed to the increasing number of partnerships between liberals (both religious and secular) and religious conservatives on issues such as international religious freedom and human rights; human trafficking, AIDS and debt relief in the Third World; and the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan.
“The question is: How do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular people of good will?” he asked. “Each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.”
Obama proposed that the ground rules for liberals would include acknowledgement that not every mention of God or faith in the public square is a violation of the separation of church and state. “Not every mention of God in the public is a breach of the wall of separation. Context matters,” he said.
For instance, rote recitation of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance probably isn't “brainwashing” school kids to accept monotheistic religion, he said. Likewise, voluntary student prayer groups meeting on school campuses on the same terms as other voluntary student clubs do not threaten anybody's freedom.
However, Obama said, those on the other side of the debate “need to recognize the critical role of the separation of church and state in protecting … not only our democracy, but the robustness of religion.”
He noted that, during the Revolutionary Era, “it was not the atheists and the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions” of the First Amendment's clause barring government sponsorship of religion, but rather “the forebears of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religion — because they did not want state-sponsored religion hampering their ability to practice their religion as they saw fit.”
However, he also warned progressives that, to make partnerships stronger, they must be willing to extend to conservatives the same rhetorical respect they demand.
He told another story from his 2004 campaign, regarding a letter he received from a Chicago doctor who said he was considering voting for Obama, despite the fact the doctor was a conservative Christian.
“His faith led him to a strong opposition to abortion and gay marriage, although he said his faith also led him to question the idolatry of the free market, the quick resort to militarism, the inattention to the issues of poverty that seemed to characterize much of the Republican agenda,” Obama said.
However, he continued, the man could not commit himself to voting for Obama because of a phrase on his campaign website that said the candidate would fight vigorously against “right-wing ideologues” who are opposed to “a woman's right to choose.” The doctor didn't feel that sort of rhetoric fairly characterized his reasons for opposing legalized abortion.
“Rereading the doctor's letter, I felt a pang of shame — because it's people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country,” Obama said.
Obama's speech came at the end of a three-day anti-poverty conference featuring a “covenant” designed to bridge conservative-liberal ideological divides in addressing poverty in the United States and worldwide.
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