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Senator Obama: Reach out to Christ — and to evangelicals

Washington, June 29, 2006 –The National Council of Churches USA and
other faith groups applauded remarks Wednesday by Senator Barack
Obama (D-Ill.) testifying to his faith in Christ and calling upon
progressive politicians to reach out to evangelical Christians.

“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,” Obama told Call to Renewal’s Pentecost 2006. “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 …
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, said Obama, is “a path that has been shared by millions upon
millions of Americans Â- 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.”

An NCC spokesperson said, “The senator speaks a profound truth for
all Americans, and I hope all Americans read his address.”

The full text of Obama’s address follows:

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 oneÂ’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 peopleÂ’s
lives — in the lives of the American people — and I think itÂ’s time
that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our
modern, pluralistic democracy.

And if weÂ’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 thatÂ’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 IÂ’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 Â- 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
didnÂ’t fall out in church. The questions I had didnÂ’t magically
disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt
that I heard GodÂ’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
theyÂ’re at — to communicate our hopes and values in a way thatÂ’s
relevant to their own Â- 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 Â-
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 Â- 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 Â- 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 manufacturersÂ’ lobby Â- but I also
believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd
because he feels somebody disrespected him, weÂ’ve got a moral
problem. ThereÂ’s a hole in that young manÂ’s heart Â- 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 nationÂ’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 womanÂ’s sense of self, a
young manÂ’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 Â- 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 donÂ’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 theyÂ’re something
theyÂ’re not. They donÂ’t need to do that. None of us need to do that.

But what I am suggesting is this Â- 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 Â- indeed, the
majority of great reformers in American history Â- 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? ItÂ’s
going to take more work, a lot more work than weÂ’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 IÂ’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 wasnÂ’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 didnÂ’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 AmericaÂ’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
DobsonÂ’s, or Al SharptonÂ’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 Â- a passage
that is so radical that itÂ’s doubtful that our own Defense Department
would survive its application? So before we get carried away, letÂ’s
read our bibles. Folks havenÂ’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 GodÂ’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 whatÂ’s possible. At some
fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. ItÂ’s the
art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected
to live up to GodÂ’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base
oneÂ’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 GodÂ’s test of devotion.

But itÂ’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 BibleÂ’s inerrancy make distinctions between
Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages Â- the Ten Commandments,
say, or a belief in ChristÂ’s divinity Â- 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 Â- 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 Â- targeting ex-offenders or
substance abusers Â- 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 donÂ’t want faith used to belittle or to divide. TheyÂ’re
tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because in
the end, thatÂ’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 justiceÂ.and I also sense
that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reasonÂ.
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-
mindedÂ..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
othersÂ.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 doctorÂ’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 Â- 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. ItÂ’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. ItÂ’s a prayer worth praying, and a conversation
worth having in this country in the months and years to come. Thank you.