Seeing the Other: Sen. Obama Delivers Brilliant Speech on Faith and Politics

The most recent comes from the well-respected authorFrederick Clarkson:

Obama and Jim Wallis before him are wrong to scapegoat "secularists" for the problems mainstream Christians and others have had in finding their voices. They are also wrong to allege that non-religious people are somehow chasing religious expression from public life. It is long past time to call a halt to this nonsense. Let's start today. He then goes on to note that... "the religious right frames much of how they view politics in America as a struggle in America between Christianity and secular humanism; between faith and no faith; between religiosity and secularism. The words differ a bit depending on who is doing the talking, but the the frame is always the same. Indeed, it has been one of the central features of the religious right's rise to power for decades and has been articulated by every major leader from Jerry Falwell to Sun Myung Moon."

Okay, no argument there. We disagree, though, about how this relates to Obama's speech. What does Clarkson site as grounds for putting the weight of this history on Sen. Obama? This line: "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." Clarkson writes, "I am not aware of anyone being asked leave their faith at the door of public life. Are there a few cranky atheists out there who oppose all religiosity, particularly in politicians and public life? Well sure, so what else is new? But there is no evidence that anyone is making any actual headway in reducing religiosity in America.Nevertheless, the influence of Wallis shows in Obama's speech. Let's talk about that influence for a moment.

To listen to or read Jim Wallis, you would think that legions of the Secular Left are rampaging across the land; that the secularity police are billy-clubbing every expression of religion in public life -- especially if it happens to be Christian; and ruthlessly blocking "people of faith" from participation in constitutional democracy and requiring politicians to hide their religiosity."

This wasn't Sen. Obama's point--but, so what? It's far more important that Clarkson find Senator Obama guilty (by association!) of being influenced by Jim Wallis!! Man, we better send out the attack dogs--that is horrible!! Thank God, we have brave bloggers like Clarkson and Atrios to set him right...because there is only one right way to think.

This brings me back to the lack of, well, intellectual tolerance and a sense of proportion in especially the conservative but also the liberal blogosphere. Blogs are full of people who seem to believe that there is only one right way to think--or even one right way to approach a conflict of ideas or strategy. Obama's strategy was about tolerance of opposing viewpoints and respect for those who disagree with us. It was about seeing our neighbors in need, about ending the phony Culture War. Obama made it clear that his approach came out of his own experience, his experience in the African American church in particular.

2.)
FrederickClarkson heard echoes of Jim Wallis in Sen. Obama's speech, and for Clarkson (as we argued here) this meant "the speech is indelibly marred by propagating one of the central frames of the religious right..." Why? Because Wallis overemphasizes the idea that secularists in the Democratic Party need to become more comfortable with the fact that a large part of the Party base has a strong sense of religious values. Clarkson believes this argument is the same as the right frame that "Democrats are hostile to religion."

But Clarkson misses some of the argument's subtleties: for Wallis also argues that these values have been missing from the laundry-list interest-group platform of a more and more "corporate" political organization. Recalling progressive religious values would embolden Democrats to talk about poverty and economic injustice in moral terms. This is also what Rabbi Lerner is talking about when he speaks of a "new bottom line" that respects individual citizens as much as corporations. Lerner is speaking from a place well to the left of the current Democratic Party, and this is perhaps less the case with Wallis. However, speaking from these values, Wallis opposed a war in Iraq that did not even come close to meeting "Just War" principles. He was also arrested last year opposing cruel and immoral US budget cuts that impacted mostly the poor. Further, because the progressive religious community has always been a core part of the Democratic Party base--not emphasizing these values (which as Obama notes are also universal values) is part of what has led the Party to the muddled middle.

So the "frame" of religious progressives is not "Democrats are hostile to religion," but rather, "Democrats have to some extent lost their way and need to return to the Party's fundamental values that have much in common with and have historically referenced progressive religious as well as secular values." This "framing" of the issues is well to the left of either that of the religious right or the existing Democratic Party leadership--a point missed by most secular liberal bloggers.

Further, as EJ Dionne notes, "...there is often a terrible awkwardness among Democratic politicians when their talk turns to God, partly because they also know how important secular voters are to their coalition. When it comes to God, it's hard to triangulate." Bingo. But, more fundamentally, Dionne also goes beyond this same tired debate to strike at the heart of what Obama was really saying. While Clarkson hears echoes of Jim Wallis, EJ Dionne hears something closer to Søren Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard argued that every individual has an individual existential relationship with the absolute. The absolute is ultimately unknowable but still worth the effort of the human attempt to understand. Credo ut intelligam, in the famous prayer of St. Anselm, I believe that I may understand. The struggle at the heart of this relationship involves doubt and an acceptance that humans will never fully comprehend this absolute. This is a very different perspective on religion than the self-righteous certainties of the religious right.

But, as Dionne notes, this is Obama's somehwat surprising personal admission: Here's what stands out. First, Obama offers the first faith testimony I have heard from any politician that speaks honestly about the uncertainties of belief. "Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts," Obama declared. "You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it."

By acknowledging the doubt factor, Obama strikes a profound note for tolerance. Each individual will resolve the existential issue of faith in their own fashion. Some people will not undertake the exhausting wrestling match with the absolute at all. That is their right and an existential choice worthy of respect. In matters of the spirit, one size emphatically does not fit all. We should expect to come to different judgments, even within ourselves at different times of our own lives. We should expect to have these discussions, because they are discussions of nothing less than what it means to be human. But Obama doesn't stop there, he offers us the benefit of his own experience--rich with the depths of the vibrant African American tradition of a prophetic and personal faith that has known struggle. He was doing organizing with black churches in Chicago, but wasn't particularly religious himself.

Obama writes: "...(I)f 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."

It's not surprising that Sen. Obama's speech was misunderstood--almost willfully--by (mostly white) bloggers on both the right and the left: they could only see things from their own frame of reference and prejudices. But it’s exactly this kind of very human intransigence that is the real subject of Obama’s speech—for his speech is first and foremost a plea for greater tolerance and effort at understanding. It is nothing less than a plea to see the Other. The speech was also a call to the individual transformation that occurs when we do so--for we grow from our encounter with the Other. Of course. this plea was greeted with smug self-righteousness from both right and left--not many of us really want to grow in this manner.

But this type of insight is an especially strong tradition in African American churches. As Sen. Obama writes:

"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."

3.)

This is not the "frame" of the religious right, this is a call to renewal, transformation and tolerance. Tolerance and understanding means engaging in a serious conversation, and relationships, with even those with whom we disagree. How different this vision is from some of his critics, who prefer to merely dismiss those with whom they disagree. Say, by calling them a “Wanker, in the immortal term of Master Atrios Bates. Let me once again set forth Atrios response in full: Dear Senator Obama,

If you think it's important to court evangelicals, then court them. If, on the other hand, you think it's important to confirm and embrace the false idea that Democrats are hostile to religion in order to set yourself apart, then continue doing what you're doing. It won't help the Democrats, and it probably won't even help you, but whatever makes you happy.

Love and kisses,

Atrios

Geez Louise, talk about buying in to the frame of the Right! It's clear that Obama wasn't just talking about "courting Evangelicals"--the obsession of the right & the MSM when it comes to Dems and religion--this was largely a progressive critique, a critique from the left of where the Democratic Party currently stands.

Beyond this, the question is in part what we think American voters are more likely to respond to: this smug type of puerile and sophomoric baiting--or the healing vision offered by Senator Obama? Here it's important to recall the way Sen. Obama ended his speech. With "a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others" that a doctor who opposed abortion had extended to the pro-choice Sen. Obama during his campaign.

"It is a prayer I still say for America today - 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."

The last American politician who spoke openly of doubts and faith and the need for tolerance and who generated the healing wind of actually seeing our neighbors in need was Robert F. Kennedy--especially in the year just before his death. I am delighted that that powerful tradition is now being ably carried forward by Sen. Barack Obama. And I thank him for this underappreciated but absolutely brilliant speech.