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.
Read it all (For those of you who prefer, the Youtube video may be found here).
Achhhh. He’s the POTUS, not a Bible scholar or theologian. We know he’s liberal. He’s gonna need lots of prayer – people have such high expectations.
Maybe Rick Warren can help him become a Christian.
Go to Google video, and do a video search using the words obama, sermon, mount.
Let’s see:
– Sermon on the Mount (see updated click on PH on right)
– The Gay Marriage Sermon On The Mount
There has been some editing, so there’s a risk that his words are being taken out of context.
As Eric Vogelin said, there is a line of demarcation in modern politics and “on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”
It’s interesting to compare this speech with John F. Kennedy’s [url=http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/Campaign+of+1960.htm]address[/url] to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960. I did this with a class at Duquesne University this semester, pointing out to them how the differences in approach can be explained, at least in part, by the creeping secularization of the public square.
When people say they don’t know who Obama is or what he thinks, I wonder if they read his speeches.
A good speech, which shows a moderation in all things, as far as I could see. This a good sort of pragmatism, assuming it is sincere, for POTUS to have. But it also shows a relativism that puts all morality and standards up for discussion. Not sure I agree with that. There are some things in our world, as there were in the world of Plato and Aristotle and the worlds in between, that are universal forms (in Plato’s words) that simply are not up for discussion, and on which civilization is built and on which Christianity is built. That is where secularists and relativists do not like religion of any sort. It limits them.
Billy, i think I understand how you could have read that.
But in fact, the assumption is that Christianity is (as well as all religions), itself, a form of relativism because it engages in unassailable (and unverifiable) truth claims. He argues that Christians should speak in universal / non relativistic terms rather than in terms only Christians understand.