To Lynn Sweet’s credit, she POSTED it yesterday and now follows it up with a far better description than most of the news stories.
She nails the thesis:
Obama has an important message about the need for Democrats to reach out to people of faith in America and not make concessions to the right-wingers who claim moral superiority. It’s similar to a campaign for faith-based voters being waged by Dean. Obama’s team also made sure there were messengers to get his message heard.
Not make concessions to the right-wingers who claim moral superiority….
That’s the key to the speech. Not that secularists need to reduce hostility to religion, but that Democrats need to not be ashamed to use language of faith in backing their ideals. That’s different than just saying because the Bible says so and Obama makes that point clear in the speech.
It is a far more positive message than most press stories and blogs have argued. It explicitly rejects that Democrats are hostile to religion, but he points out how Democrats go to great lengths to avoid religion, including two examples from his own political career.
One of the aspects of the message that struck me is that it is a confessional sermon type of Protestant speech that points out the struggle to be Christ-like. It doesn’t point fingers except when the fingers can be pointed at the speaker as well. I think many who have commented negatively on the speech miss that character of the speech–I’m guessing largely out of a lack of experience in moderate to liberal Christianity.
Second, Dana Milbank covers it in his Washington Post column as well and he was there.
Just as Bush rhetorically took on the “leave us alone” conservatives in his party, Obama said he felt a “pang of shame” because his staff had put on his campaign Web site “standard Democratic boilerplate” that disparaged abortion foes. He also complained that Democrats had “taken the bait” by banishing any hint of faith, and said they should favor faith-based addiction programs, voluntary prayer in schools and references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance.
But, again following the Bush model, Obama accompanied these rhetorical gestures to the right with a down-the-line liberal agenda, all bathed in the language of morality: taking on gun manufacturers, spending more money on poverty programs, providing contraception education and fighting Republicans on taxes.
“We need an injection of morality!” he proclaimed — but he was talking about the estate tax, not same-sex marriage.
Now, going back to Sweet, there has been one thing in several of the positive reviews that sticks out to me:
Obama goes a little further in making the suggestion that “voluntary student prayer groups” in school “should not be a threat.”
Certainly the ACLU has a strong position about this, but I’m still not convinced this is a progressive bugaboo. I seem to remember when Congress went back to correct the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Equal Acess Act of 1984 that there was a lot of support from liberals/progressives for Equal Access which largely would support the existence of voluntary religious groups at a school. Why after all shouldn’t a Bible Study have the same access as the Chemistry Club? Perhaps I’m projecting on this one.
Your analysis, this post and the last post, on Obama’s speech on religion and the dems. is very good.
If I had a question for Obama it would be: Are you sure you are not placing style ahead of substance?
Greg,
To play the -ahem- devil’s advocate; is that not an indelicate question? I have long contended that while conservatives have a legitimate (though amplified beyone reality, in my opinion) beef that some secularists mock their beliefs, they surrender that beef when they openly question something so personal and important as faith, based solely on a few political markers.
To wit: in one of many blog debates sparked by Jill Stanek, I was told by Ms. Stanek, “I don’t know what religion you practice, but it isn’t Catholicism.”
I responded then, as I do now, that it isn’t Ms. Stanek’s place (to use her as an example here) or anyone else’s to question my faith.
No doubt we could trade bible quotes until the rapture, but questioning another’s faith or faithful intentions veers dangerously close to noting the speck in their eye, while ignoring the plank in our own, no?
The ACLU stops at equal access. I haven’t seen any cases where they’ve demanded Bible Study Groups or the like be removed from government property where there hasn’t been an issue of equal access (ie, if a Bible Study Group excludes non-Christians, that is inequal access)…
Larry, perhaps you could clarify what you meant about the ACLU having a “strong position” on “this”. (What are the “strong position” and the “this” to which you refer?)
—
And I find it bizarre how Fran Eaton thinks Obama is dangerous simply because he bears witness to his Christianity. Shouldn’t people of faith be pleased when others share their faith and are so willing to offer witness to its wonders and callings?
BuckTurgidson,
I agree with you.
My question is aimed at the solutions proposed, it was’t aimed at another’s faith.
Redistributing wealth in the extreme examples has led to greater inequality and less moral societies, not greater. Punishing the gunmaker for the crimes of the inner city youth isn’t just. Obama seems to almost admit that when he says that fault lies in the heart of the urban youth — or at least in the fac that God isn’t in his heart. If he’s responsible, why punish the third party — and me the law abiding gun owner as well.
Spending more money on poverty programs simply hasn’t worked, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued in 1965 they’ve made the problem worse. To me, morality isn’t just good intentions.
Dressing up programmatic liberalism in terms of faith doesn’t get at the heart of the problem for Democrats — which is programattic liberalism.
Greg,
I mistook your “style over substance” remark as pertaining to the actual articles of faith expressed by Obama – and not to the litany of works that followed.
I regret the error.
I would then add, however, that no one is calling for a quasi-Marxist “redistribution of wealth,” but rather using the tools of government and private industry to foster opportunities for those who are unemployed, underemployed, undereducated and who lack resources necessary to compete. People who can’t just run out and get a job because they’re so mired in poverty that they don’t even know what they don’t know.
And believe me, I am not suggesting simply throwing money at the problem. We know that doesn’t work.
I would hardly take “saying so in the face of the gun lobby” as holding them responsible for youth who shoot people. Rather, asking them to acknowledge that their give-not-an-inch strategy sometimes yields results that open the door for some of the guns that get into our streets illegally.
And it’s a two way street. The extremes in the anti-gun movement have a responsibility to recognize that responsible, law-abiding citizens have a right to own arms. These are two groups that really need to soften up a tad – or the rancor will continue.
In fact, I think a lot of this is mirrored in Obama’s contention that the two sides of the religous divide need to trust each other a little. Same goes for nearly every other divisive issue.
Greg,
I mistook your “style over substance” remark as pertaining to the actual articles of faith expressed by Obama – and not to the litany of works that followed.
I regret the error.
I would then add, however, that no one is calling for a quasi-Marxist “redistribution of wealth,” but rather using the tools of government and private industry to foster opportunities for those who are unemployed, underemployed, undereducated and who lack resources necessary to compete. People who can’t just run out and get a job because they’re so mired in poverty that they don’t even know what they don’t know.
And believe me, I am not suggesting simply throwing money at the problem. We know that doesn’t work.
I would hardly take “saying so in the face of the gun lobby” as holding them responsible for youth who shoot people. Rather, asking them to acknowledge that their give-not-an-inch strategy sometimes yields results that open the door for some of the guns that get into our streets illegally.
And it’s a two way street. The extremes in the anti-gun movement have a responsibility to recognize that responsible, law-abiding citizens have a right to own arms. These are two groups that really need to soften up a tad – or the rancor will continue.
In fact, I think a lot of this is mirrored in Obama’s contention that the two sides of the religous divide need to trust each other a little. Same goes for nearly every other divisive issue.
Wise words…wise words…
And I don’t think you made a mistake and you surely have nothing to regret! It was me being too brief in my remarks, which happens a lot in this medium.
I think one of things that many who participate in politics or watch it on cable lose track of is just how much consensus there really is in this country. I think Obama reminds us of that a little.