buckeye
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 Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:34 pm Post subject: Obama on religious & secular milieus |
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Obama's remarks on religious and secular milieus
The following is from Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" pp. 216-219
I am suggesting that if we progressives shed some of our own
biases, we might recognize the values that both religious and sec-
ular people share when it comes to the moral and material direc-
tion 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
across the country. We need to take faith seriously not simply to
block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in the
larger project of American renewal.
Some of this is already beginning to happen. Megachurch
pastors like Rick Warren and T. D. Jakes are wielding their enor-
mous influence to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and
the genocide in Darfur. Self-described "progressive evangelicals"
like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the biblical in-
junction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians
against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality.
And across the country, individual churches like my own are
sponsoring day-care programs, building senior centers, and help-
ing ex-offenders reclaim their lives.
But to build on these still tentative partnerships between the
religious and secular worlds, more work will need to be done.
The tensions and 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.
The first and most difficult step for some evangelical Chris-
tians is to acknowledge the critical role that the establishment
clause has played not only in the development of our democracy
but also in the robustness of our religious practice. Contrary to
the claims of many on the Christian right who rail against the
separation of church and state, their argument is not with a
handful of liberal sixties judges. It is with the drafters of the Bill
of Rights and the forebears of today's evangelical church.
Many of the leading lights of the Revolution, most notably
Franklin and Jefferson, were deists who—while believing in an
Almighty God—questioned not only the dogmas of the Chris-
tian church but the central tenets of Christianity itself (including
Christ's divinity). Jefferson and Madison in particular argued for
what Jefferson called a "wall of separation" between church and
state, as a means of protecting individual liberty in religious be-
lief and practice, guarding the state against sectarian strife, and
defending organized religion against the state's encroachment or
undue influence.
Of course, not all the Founding Fathers agreed; men like
Patrick Henry and John Adams forwarded a variety of proposals
to use the arm of the state to promote religion. But while it was
Jefferson and Madison who pushed through the Virginia statute
of religious freedom that would become the model for the First
Amendment's religion clauses, it wasn't these students of the En-
lightenment who proved to be the most effective champions of a
separation between church and state.
Rather, it was Baptists like Reverend John Leland and other
evangelicals who provided the popular support needed to get
these provisions ratified. They did so because they were out-
siders; because their style of exuberant worship appealed to
the lower classes; because their evangelization of all comers—
including slaves—threatened the established order; because they
were no respecters of rank and privilege; and because they were
consistently persecuted and disdained by the dominant Anglican
Church in the South and the Congregationalist orders of the
North. Not only did they rightly fear that any state-sponsored
religion might encroach on their ability, as religious minorities,
to practice their faith; they also believed that religious vitality in-
evitably withers when compelled or supported by the state. In
the words of the Reverend Leiand, "It is error alone, that stands
in need of government to support it; truth can and will do better
without. . . it."
Jefferson and Leland's formula for religious freedom worked.
Not only has America avoided the sorts of religious strife that
continue to plague the globe, but religious institutions have con-
tinued to thrive—a phenomenon that some observers attribute
directly to the absence of a state-sponsored church, and hence a
premium on religious experimentation and volunteerism. More-
over, 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.
But let's even assume that we only had Christians within our
borders. Whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?
James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture
should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus,
which suggests that slavery is all right and eating shellfish is an
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 so radical that it's doubt-
ful that our Defense Department would survive its application?
This brings us to a different point—the manner in which reli-
gious views should inform public debate and guide elected offi-
cials. Surely, secularists are wrong when they ask believers to
leave their religion at the door before entering the public square;
Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan,
Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr.—indeed, the majority of
great reformers in American history—not only were motivated
by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue their
causes. To say that men and women should not inject their "per-
sonal morality" into public-policy debates is a practical absurd-
ity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it
grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy does demand is
that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into uni-
versal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their
proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason.
If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass
a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teach-
ings of my church or invoke God's will and expect that argument
to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I have to
explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to
people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
For those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many
evangelicals do, such rules of engagement may seem just one
more example of the tyranny of the secular and material worlds
over the sacred and eternal. But in a pluralistic democracy, we
have no choice. Almost by definition, faith and reason operate in
different domains and involve different paths to discerning truth.
Reason—and science—involves the accumulation of knowledge
based on realities that we can all apprehend. Religion, by con-
trast, is based on truths that are not provable through ordinary
human understanding—the "belief in things not seen." When
science teachers insist on keeping creationism or intelligent de-
sign out of their classrooms, they are not asserting that scientific
knowledge is superior to religious insight. They are simply insist-
ing that each path to knowledge involves different rules and that
those rules are not interchangeable.
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You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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