Another Take on Obama's Message

Old Fogey did a bang-up job last week on covering Barack Obama's speech to Jim Wallis' Pentacost 2006 conference (here, here and here), and now Amy Sullivan over at Slate (with a new redesign that I'm still not quite in favor of) offers an interesting take on it.

For the past six years, the most prominent Christian in America has been the president. His belief is not of the "God said it. I believe it. That settles it," sort that fundamentalists embrace. Rather, Bush subscribes to a syllogistic doctrine of presidential infallibility: God works through Christians; I am a Christian; I have decided to do X; therefore, X is God's will.

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Those who accuse Bush of being a theocrat have made much of his reported belief that God speaks through him. That's not entirely fair, because what Bush refers to is a fairly common hope among believers that God will use each of us to be instruments of justice and mercy and grace. "May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Your sight," from Psalm 19, is a prayer many Christians recite. It's just that most of us don't express this as a confident assertion that God does in fact speak through us. Instead, the prayer is a humble plea.

Obama chose to emphasize this sentiment when he told the story of his own faith journey. The senator was raised in a primarily secular home: His father was born a Muslim but became an atheist as an adult; his mother was "spiritual" but a skeptic of organized religion; his grandparents were nonpracticing Protestants. Obama's first prolonged exposure to the church came when he moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer. Working with African-American churches, he said, "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."

But—and he is firm about this—conversion wasn't for him the end point. "Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts. You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it," he said last week.

Millions and millions of faithful, including many evangelicals, have this sort of complicated relationship with their God. One of the enduring mysteries of faith is that it's not easy to determine divine will. Most of us who consider ourselves religious are engaged in a constant struggle to discern God's will for us, and we're always aware of just how far we fall short of meeting that standard. Obama received one of his loudest ovations when he admitted: "The questions I had didn't magically disappear."

This humbler version of faith has been in the shadows for the past few years, derided as moral relativism or even a lack of true belief. Obama stepped up not to defend this approach to religion, but to insist on the rightness of it. That should be comforting to anyone who has been deeply discomfited by Bush's version of Christianity. A questioning faith is a much better fit for a society like ours than one that allows for no challenge or reflection. It also acts as a check against liberals who would appropriate God for their own purposes, declaring Jesus to be the original Democrat and trotting out New Testament verses to justify their own policy programs. Liberals don't have the answer key to divining God's will any more than conservatives do.

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[H]e doesn't recount the story of his conversion in order to establish his religious bona fides; he does it in the service of a broader argument. And he doesn't defend progressives' claim to religion; he asserts the responsibilities that fall to them as religious people. Americans are looking, Obama said, for a "deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country." He started that conversation. A few others are joining in. It's time for everyone else to catch up.

While not a religious person, I'm nonetheless surrounded by religion thanks to my loved ones, and it's an obviously important facet to our nation's dialogue. Since I can't escape it (and frankly, wouldn't want to), I certainly welcome a more penitent discussion that's more enveloping than finger pointing or excluding. And I hope that this can be the start of some building blocks to that end.