Perhaps Everyone Should Read What Obama Said About Faith

Because it really isn’t about a stereotype, it’s about how to communicate with people of faith especially since most Democrats are people of faith.

Both Atrios and Stoller link to the Washington Post piece which gives me a far different impression than the text of the speech.

So let me end with another 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 President Bush?s foreign policy.

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.? He went on to write:

?I sense that you have a strong sense of justice?and I also sense that you are a fair minded person with a high regard for reason?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-minded?.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 others?I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.?

I checked my web-site and found the offending words. My staff had written them 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 doctor?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 reasonable terms ? 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.

I wrote back to the doctor and 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 ? a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.

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. Thank you.

This is a perfect example of the problem and if one had read the speech instead of the Washington Post piece, it paints a very different picture . Trusting the main stream press to accurately portray the entire speech is something we should all be careful about because they generally will put it into a particular stereotype.

It isn’t most frequently a hostility to religion with intention, but an utter lack of awareness about how language is utilized by those in politics and how it frames the issue to exclude potential allies.

It isn’t just cynically going after evangelical votes, it is also communicating within the Party which includes Latinos and African-Americans who are very religious. Should we paint the majority views in those communities on abortion as unreasonable ideologues? Because much of the language in activist communities does that. I find myself doing it.

The problem isn’t just reaching out to evangelicals, but also building trust and communication within the Democratic Party coalition. Those who fail to understand this fail to understand their own coalition. I don’t point that towards Stoller and Atrios, but more generally to make the point.

Hat tip to Lynn Sweet who posted the entire speech.

Updated to fix some inflammatory language that made it sound far harsher on Atrios and Matt than I meant. And the editing was before I even read the post in which Matt says nice things about me.