The year before Barack Obama declared his intention to seek the office of US President, he gave a keynote speech at a conference sponsored by the progressive religious organization, Sojourners. It described Obama’s view of the relationship between politics and religion. To look at such a delicate subject in anything more than a cursory or summary way of one or two sentences is quite unusual for holders of major political office. Hence it’s worth examining the speech in some detail.

Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference. I’ve had the opportunity to take a look at your Covenant for a New America. It is filled with outstanding policies and prescriptions for much of what ails this country. So I’d like to congratulate you all on the thoughtful presentations you’ve given so far about poverty and justice in America, and for putting fire under the feet of the political leadership here in Washington.

The Sojourners’ manifesto is a good one, focusing on a Biblically-based call to reduce poverty, both in the US and the internationally.

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 that we’ve been seeing over the last several years.

Actually, it will take a while before Obama gets around to saying what the bitter arguments are surely about — abortion and gay marriage. Since there is no real disagreement over the need to reduce poverty it seems probable — Sojourners being a progressive organization — that Obama was talking to an audience that was friendly to his concerns, and hence personally not very bitter towards him.

I do so because, as you all know, we can affirm the importance of poverty in the Bible; and we can raise up and pass out this Covenant for a New America. We can talk to the press, and we can discuss the religious call to address poverty and environmental stewardship all we want, but it won’t have an impact unless we tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.

This is puzzling. The Sojourners call is not particularly controversial, and wouldn’t, by itself, be cause for suspicion. Though Obama doesn’t indicate how this suspicion arises, one has to wonder if it is because any call for action from a Christian source is going to be examined carefully (again and again) by some, to see if those issues of abortion and gay marriage are somehow accompanying it.

I want to give you an example that I think illustrates this fact. As some of you know, during the 2004 U.S. Senate General Election I ran against a gentleman named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both immoral and godless.

Keyes is a Catholic (Obama only mentions this later), and it takes little imagination to figure out on what issues Keyes disagreed with Obama. Though — and this is something that will recur throughout Obama’s speech — Obama describes Keyes opposition as something based in rhetoric. Perhaps Obama thinks (against all the evidence) that Keyes does not really believe what he says.

Indeed, Mr. Keyes announced towards the end of the campaign 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.”
Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.

Putting aside the uncertainty over what it would mean for Jesus to vote, Keyes is certainly making the claim that Obama’s position on those (as yet unmentioned) issues is contrary to God.

Now, I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn’t a bad piece of strategic advice. But what they didn’t understand, however, was that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths. Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination. Mr. Obama says he’s a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.

Here Obama understands precisely what Keyes’ claims center around: the knowledge of certain truths. The rest of Obama’s speech will be aimed at opposing that.

And so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the Pope?

Obama focuses on two ways in which truth can arrive, though he states them vaguely. Truth could come from the Bible’s statements. But by what means? One way of reading the Bible is to take it as a set of literal statements, each expressing a particular truth. That method Obama regards as folly, though he does not say why. Or alternatively, truth might arrive from the teachings of particular people. That Obama also rejects, though again without any indication as to why.

Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be the typically liberal response in such debates – namely, I said that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can’t impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.

Indeed that is a typically liberal response, and is just as typically unhelpful. “Thou shalt not kill” is a Judeo-Christian religious value that is imposed into the set of laws that govern the democracy of the USA. That’s because enough people, whether religious or not, see value in such a law. That its origin is religious does not disqualify the law from being accepted into a democracy. Other things might disqualify something of religious origin, but not merely its origin. That distinction Obama simply fails to address.

But Mr. Keyes’s implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also aware that my answer did not adequately address the role my faith has in guiding my own values and my own beliefs.

Perhaps because, if other peoples values can be so quickly discarded, then what foundation would Obama use to base his own values on? Obama clearly understands that his faith is guiding his values. And just as clearly — as it seems to him — he can’t impose his values on others.

Now, 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.

Roe v. Wade was in 1973, so Obama is presumably referring to that.

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.

Some detailed statistics can be seen here. (For example, for the 2004 election, atheists and agnostics went 4:1 for Kerry, while evangelical Protestants went 4:1 for Bush.)

Conservative leaders 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.

Politicians across the spectrum will try to exploit whatever they can. The wording Obama uses tends towards suggesting that something about the exploitation is not based on something real.

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, there are some liberals who 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.

“Taken the bait”? That makes it sounds as though there really were some way that the particular Democrats described could avoid such reactions or claims. But it is not at all clear what would (or could) happen if the “bait” were not taken. Is the “bait” something on offer, or something already swallowed and assimilated?

Now, such strategies of avoidance 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 — in the lives of the American people — and I think it’s time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.

To be accurate, the reconciliation is already in place: decisions are ultimately made by voting. Yet, people also have a sense that some things should not be changeable by voting. It’s the balance between changeable and unchangeable that has to be sought.

It is certainly true that religion is a source of  ideas that are held to be unchangeable. But one does not have to talk long to some on, for example, the abortion issue, to realize that appeals to the unchangeable are just as common even where there is no religious basis.

At heart, the issue is not reconciling faith with democracy: but reconciling differing versions of what is held to be unchangeable.

And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do 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 rounds – 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 they’re 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 supported 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 that long highway towards nothingness.

This only identifies a partial reason for faith. Such an explanatory value, taken too far, or used in isolation, would become condescending. Does Obama take it too far?

And I speak with some experience on this matter. I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I’ve ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

Which likely means that Obama has himself experienced only one aspect of the reasons for faith. Some have faith because they have always had; they grew up with it. This is not the case with Obama. And some have faith because they have a hunger for truth and right conduct. And for some this faith is inter-personal. These aspects are not evidenced by what Obama says here.

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.
I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

Obama sees loneliness as a reason for faith, perhaps because it describes his own circumstances. This is valid enough, but does mean that he may grasp with more difficulty the community that has been that way from birth, having passed on its own inheritance. And also the faith that goes with a search for truth.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well — 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.

And if it weren’t 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 – not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

And if it weren’t 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 – not just to work with the church, but to be in 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 cloth the naked 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, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope

Wonderfully good, and deeply troubling. The call to change strikes a kind of universal note, but it is only seen as embedded within a single thread of the human community, and a single thread of history. Of heaven and earth, only earth is talked about in concrete terms.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship — the grounding of faith in struggle — that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts.
You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first 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 this 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 on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Christ as an “ally”? Not wrong, but neither does it bring to mind any picture of authority. Obama is left searching for the truth, but with no indication of exactly how he thinks he will know he has found it. Hence the doubts can continue.

That’s a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans – evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points 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 their beliefs and their values.

And that is why that, 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 – then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

It’s not clear whether such an appeal will get across to progressives; more particularly, those progressives who simply take the idea of “God’s spirit beckoning me” as words actually meaning not much at all. And in any case, the continuing absence of any kind of appeal by Obama to authority and truth will mean that such progressives will still not understand the field of religious discourse. Obama cannot explain what he has never experienced.

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.

Part of that is quite true — that religious views can be exploited for purely worldly political purposes. But Obama’s description of a “vacuum”, which is something empty, has that emptiness only being filled with the most insular, or the exploiters. No one else?

In other words, if we don’t reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to hold sway.

That’s right, Obama really does see no one else except what to him are the insular and the exploiters.

More fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms.

The loss of appeal to religion has left it very unclear to some progressives exactly how to appeal to morals in any way. Anyone can have an opinion about what is right and wrong, but where is an appeal of absolute correctness to be made to? Religion cam have this, but when abandoned, it leaves only impermanent substitutes behind. The most common appeal through history is simply to power. Progressives without religion must inevitably end up there.

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.

There is Obama over-focusing on rhetoric. He greatly underestimates the fact that imagery actually depends very concretely on beliefs. Different beliefs will have necessarily have differing imagery. Even if a speaker chooses to use a front of some kind of imagery that is not really his own, he will quickly be revealed for what he is when the imagery continually strikes false notes.

Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address without reference to “the judgments of the Lord.” Or King’s I Have a Dream speech without references 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.

Those speeches are thick with Biblical imagery, whether directly or at one remove, and taking out “Lord” or “God” would only affect them slightly.

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. 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, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers’ lobby – but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we’ve got a moral problem. There’s a hole in that young man’s heart – a hole that the government alone cannot fix.

All of which entirely evades the unpleasant fact that governments are themselves made up of people with imperfections. Governments can create problems just as easily as they can solve them. An appeal for “changes in government policy” raises the questions: What change? And on what basis?

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 could bring about quicker results than a battalion of lawyers. They have more lawyers than us anyway.

People’s imperfections can be solved the government and CEOs? Is this an appeal to anything more than power?

I think that we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor girls and boys. I think that the work that Marian Wright Edelman has done all her life is absolutely how we should prioritize our resources in the wealthiest nation on earth. I also think that we should 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.

Government as parent.

But, you know, 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. So 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 that all young people should have for the act of sexual intimacy.

It would help in interpreting that if some indication was given of how that all translated into action. All too easily, a “sense of reverence” only means “make sure you use contraception”.

I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology – that can be dangerous. Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith. As Jim has mentioned, some politicians come and clap — off rhythm — to the choir. We don’t need that.

Though, with Obama’s emphasis on rhetoric, that may often be what actually happens — many references to “faith” and “values”, but no change in action.

In fact, because I do not believe that religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular, affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that they’re something they’re not. They don’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.

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 Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, 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. So 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.

Indeed so. Faith is one source of morals, but morals can be derived in other ways. As Obama knows, some really do say that personal morality can’t be imposed on others. But everyone operates with a personal morality, and everyone imposes some parts on others. Every politician who says “I can’t impose my personal morality on others”, in fact does that every time they vote on a bill. It’s simply not a general rule.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some 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 all 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 American renewal.

Some of this is already beginning to happen. Pastors, friends of mine 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 our good friend 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.

Obama seems to be claiming (“some of this is already beginning to happen”) that the actions of (e.g.) Rick Warren are only because progressives reached out to him. Is this so?

And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you’ve got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don’t need and weren’t even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.

Ker-plunk! Obama’s cloth ear for alternative ideas emerges. Not everything in politics is a moral issue. Estate tax might be a good way to obtain money for the government; or it might not. Valid differing opinions could be held without transgressing any morals.

Across the country, individual churches like my own and your 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.

Exactly so. And similar things have been done by, at least, Christians for many, many centuries across the world.

So the question is, how do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular people of good will? It’s going to take more work, a lot more work than we’ve done so far. The tensions and the 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.

Obama skips right past another couple of important questions. Exactly what are these “partnerships”? First Obama said that these things were done by churches, and then suddenly they were in partnerships with secular people. Exactly which process is he talking about? And if the churches are doing something good, why not just let them do it?

While I’ve already laid out some of the work that progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what conservative leaders need to do — some truths they need to acknowledge.

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. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

While the separation of church and state has certainly given a particular continuing character to the US form of democracy, it is not at all clear what role it has played in preserving it. Other countries have long-standing democracies in which church and state have been inter-twined.

Picking John Leland as an example of the support for religious liberty is extremely strange — since Leland eventually took it so far as to downplay the evils of slavery, and thought that the government should not be interfering with it.

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.

“Sectarianism” is one of those words that have no fixed meaning. In fact, some have used it as a description precisely of a diverse set of beliefs. Exactly what Obama means is murky, as are the dangers he sees.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with 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 that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

Whose Christianity should be taught in the schools? Teaching by the state should not promote any kind of Christianity. This constitutional answer does not depend at all on what percentage of the USA is Christian. Why does Obama think that it is a question that might be difficult to answer?

And why does Obama pick examples from the Bible that are, on the face of it, expressly designed to demonstrate the apparent uselessness of the Bible for practical purposes? The simplest answer is that Obama does in fact think that the Bible is useless for practical purposes — and that all religious beliefs must be passed through some undefined other kind of thinking.

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.

In fact, Democracy works by voting. There is no necessity for voters to translate concerns into universal values. Nor is there anything preventing anyone voting based on what they learn in their own churches. To suggest otherwise is to attack democracy head-on.

But certainly, if one attempts to gain votes from others, it will benefit me to translate my concerns into universal language, so that I can persuade others. And I can show how the teachings that I accept actually work well in the world. But democracy simply does not demand this.

Now this is going to be difficult for some 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 what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of 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, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

At some fundamental level, morality does not allow for compromise. It is not something limited to religion. Atheists appeal to morals, and are just as resistant to compromising them.

Then, another story aimed at opposing the practicality of  the Bible:

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 passes God’s test of devotion.

But it’s fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, 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 we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason.

“..we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees..”

Obama, unknowing, points out exactly the problem. And because we all too often do not see what Abraham — who had faith — saw, God hides such things away, just as the two young men who came with Abraham were left behind, so that they should not see, because they would not understand. This is nothing against practicality but, contra Obama, a warning that our limitations radically affect what we are capable of seeing. The whole story leads to a real practicality.

Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion.
This goes for both sides.

Even those who claim the Bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing 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.

There are three such distinctions: those teachings which do not vary between cultures; those teachings that at heart stay the same, but may be implemented in culturally different ways; and those teachings which are culturally specific. (This last division being being discarded at will by Jesus.)

At this point it is hardly surprising that Obama explicitly places religious teaching at a lower level than other considerations. The wisdom of politics is placed at a higher level.

But a sense of proportion 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 didn’t. Having voluntary student prayer groups use 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.

All of which depends crucially on how the First Amendment is to be interpreted, which is an ongoing problem.

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 of attack. They don’t want faith used to belittle or to 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.

That’s the sort of thing that appeals only when actual issues are kept away.

So let me end with just one other 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 supporting 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 the Republican agenda.

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 website, which suggested that I would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor 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.”

Fair-minded words.

So I looked at my website and found the offending words. In fairness to them, my staff had written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language 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.

It’ hard to make out exactly who is being held responsible here for Obama’s words. Not really  Obama, because his staff had written the words. Not really his staff, because it was standard Democratic language. Not really the Democrats because it was boilerplate. Ah, it finally turns out that the words are only written because of his opponents.

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 fair-minded words. 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.

So I wrote back to the doctor, and I 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.

All fine words. But still only rhetoric. At the end of the day nothing about the issues had actually been looked at, examined, turned about in mind, and contemplated. For Obama, every issue is skin-deep: a thin layer of rhetorical cells.