The liberal hemiblogosphere is buzzing with criticism of Barack Obama's remarks about religion in politics, from his keynote address at faith-based group Call to Renewal's "Building a Covenant for a New America" conference:
Their main gripe is that Obama is idiotically legitimizing the GOP meme about Democrats being hostile to religion. And they have him dead-to-rights:
- To the best of my knowledge, every single Democrat in national office believes in a major religion, and many are quite passionate about their faith. [Update: Rep. Pete Stark (D-Heathenville) has since come out of the closet.]
- The Democratic Party is infinitely more in tune with biblical values like charity and loving thy neighbor than the party of rob-the-poor-and-give-to-the-rich, hate-mongering, and pre-emptive war.
- Voters who are drunk with religiosity will never vote for a Democrat, which makes pandering to them not only unseemly, but pathetic.
My major beef, though, is that I don't want another bullshit artist in the White House, a residence that Obama clearly covets.
Annotated excerpts from his speech:
We first need to understand that Americans are a religious people... substantially more people believe in angels than do those who believe in evolution.
How can any sane person cite that alleged statistic without shouting "WTF
?" and demanding a complete overhaul of science education in this country?
...the church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.
This quote offered me a second insight: Obama is full of shit. Faith is precisely about pretending away doubt. Merriam-Webster defines it as "firm belief in something for which there is no proof; complete trust."
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."
To score some cheap holier-than-thou points, Obama belittles the legacy of Lincoln and King, implying that their profundity and decency would fall like a house of cards if it not for religious imagery. Imagine this quote from Lincoln without reference to God: "In great contests, each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time." Or this one: "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
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.
How dare you suggest that your religiosity gives you special standing on matters of values? Your smug sanctimoniousness shows that you are ill-qualified to lecture me or anybody else about such things.
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.... 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.
Here you're fluffing that Republican straw man bigtime. Can you name one leading Democrat who has ever said that believers have to back away from their faith? And why do you keep conflating "personal morality" with religion? It is religion, with its robotically repeated dogma, that devalues the importance of "personal morality."
Pastors like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influences to confront AIDS...
While other, more enormously influential religious figures seek to ban the use of condoms, the most effective preventer of AIDS.
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.
If that "under God" phrase is so inconsequential, why was it shoehorned into the pledge more than fifty years after it was written by Francis Bellamy? According to Pledge historian Dr. John Baer, "Bellamy's granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there."
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.
Hey, Barack, ever heard of a decision called "Brown vs. The Board of Education"? It says that separate is inherently unequal. If you're the lone Jew, Muslim, or Atheist who sits out while the good ol' boys bond in their Christian rituals and drink their Jesus Juice, how could that possibly hurt? Kids are always so understanding of outsiders, doncha know?
Not everyone in Liberal Land agrees that Obama has jumped the shark. DailyKos, which seems bent on de-secularizing the donkey, critiques the Obama critics.
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