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Watch the Video and Read the Text of Barack Obama's 'Call
to Renewal' Speech
(June 28, 2006)
Sen.
Barack Obama outlined his views on religion and government in a June
28, 2006, speech. He went so far as to equate Dr. James Dobson with the
far-Left Rev. Al Sharpton. "Obviously, that is offensive to me," Dr.
Dobson says. "He's deliberately distorting the traditional
understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused
theology."
TRANSCRIPT
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, then the
Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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. And if you doubt
that, let me give you an example.
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.
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.
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 leadership need not accept such wisdom in
counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their
politics.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
And that night, before I went to bed I said a prayer of my own. It's a
prayer I think I share with a lot of Americans. 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.
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