Monday, November 06, 2006

ONE NATION... UNDER GOD?

I came across this great article from sojourners, written by Barack Obama. It's well worth the read.
One Nation ... Under God?
Democracy demands that religious Americans translate their concerns into universal values - and that secularists make room for faith and morality.
by Sen. Barack Obama



I’d like to look at the connection between religion and politics and 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. We can raise up 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—a debate we’ve been having in this country for the last 30 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 the issues of abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design....

read the rest of Obama's article here

4 comments:

Mary Beth said...

Can he be our next president, please?

Anonymous said...

Hey, Jonathon, how are you? Did you read Jamie Smith's related post from a couple of months back?

http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2006/07/barack-obama-another-reason-to-leave.html

Peace,

Chris

Jonathan Marlowe said...

I also hope he is our next president. He is much better than any other politician on the scene that I know of right now. Of course, as a Hauerwasian, I don't like it when he talks about translating our Christian convictions into universal values.

Jonathon said...

funny, i was struck the exact same way.