[This is brilliant. Feel free to circulate it!]
Barack Obama speaks out on faith and politics: 'Call to Renewal' Keynote
Address
by Sen. Barack Obama
Office of Sen. Barack Obama 6-28-2006
Good morning. I appreciate the op****tunity to speak here at the Call to
Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America conference, and I'd like
to congratulate you all on the thoughtful presentations you've given so
far about poverty and justice in America. I think all of us would affirm
that caring for the poor finds root in all of our religious traditions -
certainly that's true for my own.
But today I'd like to talk about the connection between religion and
politics and perhaps offer some thoughts about how we can sort through
some of the often bitter arguments over this issue over the last several
years.
I do so because, as you all know, we can affirm the im****tance of
poverty in the Bible and discuss the religious call to environmental
steward****p all we want, but it won't have an impact if we don't tackle
head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious
America and secular America.
For me, this need was illustrated during my 2004 race for the U.S.
Senate. My opponent, Alan Keyes, was well-versed in the Jerry
Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives
as both immoral and godless.
Indeed, towards the end of the campaign, Mr. Keyes said that, "Jesus
Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ would not vote for Barack
Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable
for Christ to have behaved."
Now, I was urged by some of my liberal sup****ters not to take this
statement seriously. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, his arguments
not worth entertaining.
What they didn't understand, however, was that I had to take him
seriously. For he claimed to speak for my religion - he claimed
knowledge of certain truths.
Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, he would say, and yet he sup****ts a
lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.
Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, but sup****ts the destruction of
innocent and sacred life.
What would my sup****ters have me say? That a literalist reading of the
Bible was folly? That Mr. Keyes, a Roman Catholic, should ignore the
teachings of the pope?
Unwilling to go there, I answered with the typically liberal response in
some debates - namely, that we live in a pluralistic society, that I
can't impose my religious views on another, that I was running to be the
U.S. senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.
But Mr. Keyes' implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian
nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer didn't adequately
address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and beliefs.
My dilemma was by no means unique. In a way, it reflected the broader
debate we've been having in this country for the last thirty years over
the role of religion in politics.
For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and
pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply
along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest gap in party
affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or
those who reside in so-called red states and those who reside in blue,
but between those who attend church regularly and those who don't.
Conservative leaders, from Falwell and Robertson to Karl Rove and Ralph
Reed, have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently
reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values
and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country
that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay
marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.
Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try
to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of
offending anyone and claiming that - regardless of our personal beliefs
- constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, some liberals
dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or
intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints
them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word "Christian" describes
one's political opponents, not people of faith.
Such strategies of avoidance may work for progressives when the 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 the lives of the American
people, and join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our
modern, pluralistic democracy.
We first need to understand that Americans are a religious people.
Ninety percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves
with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed
Christians, and substantially more people believe in angels than do
those who believe in evolution.
This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing
by skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In fact, it
speaks to a hunger that's deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond
any particular issue or cause.
Each day, it seems, thousands of Americans are going about their daily
round - dropping off the kids at school, driving to the office, flying
to a business meeting, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their
diets - and coming to the realization that something is missing. They
are deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their
sheer busyness, is not enough.
They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They're
looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling sup****ted by a recent
study that shows Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than
ever before. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares
about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to
travel down a long highway towards nothingness.
I speak from experience here. I was not raised in a particularly
religious household. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just
two, was Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose
parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, grew up with a
healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, I
did too.
It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a
community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted
my own spiritual dilemma.
The Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me; they saw
that I knew their Book and shared their values and sang their songs. But
they sensed a part of me that remained removed, detached, an observer in
their midst. In time, I too came to realize that something was missing -
that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a
particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart
and alone.
If not for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I
may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I
found myself drawn to the church.
For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the
African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made
real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black
church understands in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the
hungry and clothe the ****d and challenge powers and principalities. And
in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was
able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge
against death; it is an active, palpable agent in the world. It is a
source of hope.
And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hard****p, the
grounding of faith in struggle, that the church offered me a second
insight: that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts. You need to
come to church precisely because you are of this world, not apart from
it; you need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash
away - because you are human and need an ally in your difficult journey.
It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able
to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and
affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an
epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling
beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God's
spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated
myself to discovering his truth.
The path I traveled has been shared by millions upon millions of
Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims
alike; some since birth, others at a turning point in their lives. It is
not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values.
In fact, it is often what drives them.
This is why, if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at - to
communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their own -
we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.
Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good
Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the
negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than
in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards
one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious
broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome - others will
fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those
who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
In other words, if we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and
other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, Jerry
Falwells and Pat Robertsons will continue to hold sway.
More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of
religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in
moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical - if we scrub
language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and
terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their
personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural
Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord," or King's I
Have a Dream speech without reference to "all of God's children." Their
summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible
and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.
Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the
nation is not just rhetorical. Our fear of getting preachy may also lead
us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most
urgent social problems.
After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the
unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect
ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and
individual callousness - in the imperfections of man.
Solving these problems will require changes in government policy; it
will also require changes in hearts and minds. I believe in keeping guns
out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of
the gun manufacturer's lobby - but I also believe that when a
gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels
somebody disrespected him, we have a problem of morality; there's a hole
in that young man's heart - a hole that government programs alone cannot
fix.
I believe in vigorous enforcement of our non-discrimination laws; but I
also believe that a transformation of conscience and a genuine
commitment to diversity on the part of the nation's CEOs can bring
quicker results than a battalion of lawyers.
I think we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls
and boys, and give them the information about contraception that can
prevent unwanted pregnancies, lower abortion rates, and help assure that
that every child is loved and cherished. But my Bible tells me that if
we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not
turn from it. I think faith and guidance can help fortify a young
woman's sense of self, a young man's sense of responsibility, and a
sense of reverence by all young people for the act of ***ual intimacy.
I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to
religious terminology. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic
expressions of faith - the politician who shows up at a black church
around election time and claps - off rhythm - to the gospel choir.
But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask
believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the
public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings
Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great
reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but
repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that
men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public
policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a
codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian
tradition.
Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might
recognize the overlapping values that both religious and secular people
share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country.
We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next
generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I,"
resonates in religious congregations across the country. And we might
realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical
community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger
project of America's renewal.
Some of this is already beginning to happen. Pastors like Rick Warren
and T.D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influences to confront AIDS,
Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Religious thinkers
and activists like my friends Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up
the Biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing
Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing
inequality. National denominations have shown themselves as a force on
Capitol Hill, on issues such as immigration and the federal budget. And
across the country, individual churches like my own are sponsoring day
care programs, building senior centers, helping ex-offenders reclaim
their lives, and rebuilding our gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina.
To build on these still-tentative partner****ps between the religious and
secular worlds will take work - a lot more work than we've done so far.
The tensions and suspicions on each side of the religious divide will
have to be squarely addressed, and each side will need to accept some
ground rules for collaboration.
While I've already laid out some of the work that progressives need to
do on this, I believe that the conservative leaders of the Religious
Right will need to acknowledge a few things as well.
For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation
of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but
the robustness of our religious practice. That during our founding, it
was not the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most
effective champions of this separation; it was the persecuted religious
minorities, Baptists like John Leland, who were most concerned that any
state-sponsored religion might hinder their ability to practice their
faith.
Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the
dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were,
we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a
Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of
nonbelievers.
And even if we did have only Christians within our borders, whose
Christianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson's, or Al
Sharpton's? Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?
Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that
eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests
stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick
to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage so radical that it's doubtful
that our Defense Department would survive its application?
This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the
religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather
than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be
subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to
abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the
practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke
God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that
is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at
all.
This may be difficult for those who believe in the inerrancy of the
Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have
no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of
common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the
art of the possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow
for compromise. It insists on the impossible. If God has spoken, then
followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the
consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may
be sublime; to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a
dangerous thing.
We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to
offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the
mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to
act as God has commanded.
Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very
last minute, and Abraham p***** God's test of devotion.
But it's fair to say that if any of us saw a twenty-first century
Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we
would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of
Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would
do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham
sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in
accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, be
it common laws or basic reason.
Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism
requires some sense of pro****tion.
This goes for both sides.
Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between
scriptural edicts, a sense that some passages - the Ten Commandments,
say, or a belief in Christ's divinity - are central to Christian faith,
while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to
accommodate modern life.
The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the
majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed
to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment
to ban it. Religious leader****p need not accept such wisdom in
counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their
politics.
But a sense of pro****tion should also guide those who police the
boundaries between church and state. Not every mention of God in public
is a breach to the wall of separation - context matters. It is doubtful
that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or
brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase "under God;" I
certainly didn't. Having voluntary student prayer groups using school
property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the
High School Republicans should threaten Democrats. And one can envision
certain faith-based programs - targeting ex-offenders or substance
abusers - that offer a uniquely powerful way of solving problems.
So we all have some work to do here. But I am hopeful that we can bridge
the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this
debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that
to happen. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are
tired of seeing faith used as a tool to attack and belittle and divide -
they're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because
in the end, that's not how they think about faith in their own lives.
So let me end with another interaction I had during my campaign. A few
days after I won the Democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race, I
received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical
School that said the following:
"Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win. I was
happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I am seriously
considering voting for you in the general election. I write to express
my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from sup****ting you."
The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his
commitments to be "totalizing." His faith led him to a strong opposition
to abortion and gay marriage, although he said that his faith also led
him to question the idolatry of the free market and quick resort to
militarism that seemed to characterize much of President Bush's foreign
policy.
But the reason the doctor was considering not voting for me was not
simply my position on abortion. Rather, he had read an entry that my
campaign had posted on my Web site, which suggested that I would fight
"right wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose."
He went on to write:
"I sense that you have a strong sense of justice ... and I also sense
that you are a fair-minded person with a high regard for reason ...
Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose
abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict
suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded. ...
You know that we enter times that are fraught with possibilities for
good and for harm, times when we are struggling to make sense of a
common polity in the context of plurality, when we are unsure of what
grounds we have for making any claims that involve others ... I do not
ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about
this issue in fair-minded words."
I checked my Web site and found the offending words. My staff had
written them to summarize my pro-choice position during the Democratic
primary, at a time when some of my opponents were questioning my
commitment to protect Roe v. Wade.
Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame. It is
people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about
religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they
are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in
reasonable terms - those who know of the central and awesome place that
God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as
simply another political issue with which to score points.
I wrote back to the doctor and thanked him for his advice. The next day,
I circulated the email to my staff and changed the language on my
website to state in clear but simple terms my pro-choice position. And
that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own - a prayer
that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that
the doctor had extended to me.
It is a prayer I still say for America today - a hope that we can live
with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the
good of all. It's a prayer worth praying, and a conversation worth
having in this country in the months and years to come. Thank you.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=news.display_article&mode=C&NewsID=5454
--
Shalom/Salaam! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
Blogs - http://rowlandsblogs.blogspot.com/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
Funny Jokes and Pics - http://funnyjokesnpics.blogspot.com/
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