Editor's Note: Following here below is the text of Barack Obama's keynote address at the Sojourners
/Call to Renewal "Building a Covenant for a New America" conference in Washington, D.C., as he delivered it on June 26, 2006. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to speak here at the Call to
Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America conference. I've had
the opportunity to take a look at your Covenant for a New America. It is
filled with outstanding policies and prescriptions for much of what
ails this country. So I'd like to congratulate you all on the thoughtful
presentations you've given so far about poverty and justice in America,
and for putting fire under the feet of the political leadership here in
Washington.
But today I'd like to talk about the connection
between religion and politics and perhaps 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.
I do so because, as you all
know, we can affirm the importance of poverty in the Bible; and we can
raise up and pass out this Covenant for a New America. We can talk to
the press, and we can discuss 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.
I want to give you
an example that I think illustrates this fact. As some of you know,
during the 2004 U.S. Senate General Election I ran against a gentleman
named Alan Keyes. Mr. Keyes is well-versed in the Jerry Falwell/Pat
Robertson style of rhetoric that often labels progressives as both
immoral and godless.
Indeed, Mr. Keyes announced towards the end
of the campaign that, "Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.
Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved
in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved."
Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama.
Now,
I was urged by some of my liberal supporters not to take this statement
seriously, to essentially ignore it. To them, Mr. Keyes was an
extremist, and his arguments not worth entertaining. And since at the
time, I was up 40 points in the polls, it probably wasn't a bad piece of
strategic advice.
But what they didn't understand, however, was
that I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously, for he claimed to speak for my
religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths.
Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, he was saying, and yet he supports a lifestyle that the Bible calls an abomination.
Mr. Obama says he's a Christian, but supports the destruction of innocent and sacred life.
And
so what would my supporters have me say? How should I respond? Should I
say that a literalist reading of the Bible was folly? Should I say that
Mr. Keyes, who is a Roman Catholic, should ignore the teachings of the
Pope?
Unwilling to go there, I answered with what has come to be
the typically liberal response in such debates — namely, I said that we
live in a pluralistic society, that I can't impose my own religious
views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois
and not the Minister of Illinois.
But Mr. Keyes's implicit
accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me, and I was also
aware that my answer did not adequately address the role my faith has in
guiding my own values and my own beliefs.
Now, my dilemma was by
no means unique. In a way, it reflected the broader debate we've been
having in this country for the last thirty 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 issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and
intelligent design.
Democrats, for the most part, have taken the
bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious
values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that -
regardless of our personal beliefs — constitutional principles tie our
hands. At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the
public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a
caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or
thinking that the very word "Christian" describes one's political
opponents, not people of faith.
Now, such strategies of avoidance
may work for progressives when our opponent is Alan Keyes. But over the
long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the
power of faith in people's lives — in the lives of the American people —
and I think it's time that we join a serious debate about how to
reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.
And if
we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans
are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent
affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call
themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in
America believe in angels than they do in evolution.
This
religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by
skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In fact, it
speaks to a hunger that's deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond
any particular issue or cause.
Each day, it seems, thousands of
Americans are going about their daily rounds — dropping off the kids at
school, driving to the office, flying to a business meeting, shopping at
the mall, trying to stay on their diets — and they're coming to the
realization that something is missing. They are deciding that their
work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not
enough.
They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their
lives. They're looking to relieve a chronic loneliness, a feeling
supported by a recent study that shows Americans have fewer close
friends and confidants than ever before. And so they need an assurance
that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that
they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards
nothingness.
And I speak with some experience on this matter. I
was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly
many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was
just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother,
whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably
one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew
up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a
consequence, so did I.
It wasn't until after college, when I went
to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian
churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.
I was
working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized
themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared
their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me
that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.
And
in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well — that
without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular
community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and
alone.
And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the
historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the
months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with
the church, but to be in the church.
For one thing, I believed and
still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition
to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here
today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate
way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and
challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for
freedom and the rights of man, 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. As a source of hope.
And
perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship — the
grounding of faith in struggle — that the church offered me a second
insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.
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. You need to embrace Christ
precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and
need an ally in this difficult journey.
It was because of these
newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle
of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of
Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a
choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I
had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the
South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted
myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.
That's
a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans —
evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since
birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not
something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In
fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.
And
that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they're at —
to communicate our hopes and values in a way that's relevant to their
own — then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious
discourse.
Because when we ignore the debate about what it means
to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only
in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather
than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations
towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and
religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome —
others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith,
or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
In
other words, if we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and other
religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry
Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to hold sway.
More
fundamentally, the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of
religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in
moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical — if we scrub
language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and
terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their
personal morality and social justice. Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural
Address without reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's I
Have a Dream speech without references to "all of God's children." Their
summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible,
and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.
Our failure as
progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not
just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us
to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most
urgent social problems.
After all, the problems of poverty and
racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical
problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in
both societal indifference and individual callousness — in the
imperfections of man.
Solving these problems will require changes
in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a
change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and
that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers' lobby
- but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately
into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we've got a
moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart — a hole that
the government alone cannot fix.
I believe in vigorous enforcement
of our non-discrimination laws. But I also believe that a
transformation of conscience and a genuine commitment to diversity on
the part of the nation's CEOs could bring about quicker results than a
battalion of lawyers. They have more lawyers than us anyway.
I
think that we should put more of our tax dollars into educating poor
girls and boys. I think that the work that Marian Wright Edelman has
done all her life is absolutely how we should prioritize our resources
in the wealthiest nation on earth. I also think that we should give them
the information about contraception that can prevent unwanted
pregnancies, lower abortion rates, and help assure that that every child
is loved and cherished.
But, you know, my Bible tells me that if
we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not
turn from it. So I think faith and guidance can help fortify a young
woman's sense of self, a young man's sense of responsibility, and a
sense of reverence that all young people should have for the act of
sexual intimacy.
I am not suggesting that every progressive
suddenly latch on to religious terminology — that can be dangerous.
Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faith. As
Jim has mentioned, some politicians come and clap — off rhythm — to the
choir. We don't need that.
In fact, because I do not believe that
religious people have a monopoly on morality, I would rather have
someone who is grounded in morality and ethics, and who is also secular,
affirm their morality and ethics and values without pretending that
they're something they're not. They don't need to do that. None of us
need to do that.
But what I am suggesting is this — secularists
are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door
before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham
Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King -
indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history — were not
only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue
for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their
"personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.
Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it
grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Moreover, if we
progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some
overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it
comes to the moral and material direction 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 all across the country. And we might realize
that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and
engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American
renewal.
Some of this is already beginning to happen. Pastors,
friends of mine like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes are wielding their
enormous influences to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the
genocide in Darfur. Religious thinkers and activists like our good
friend Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the Biblical
injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against
budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality.
And by the
way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and
Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you've got an
estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of
social programs to go to a handful of folks who don't need and weren't
even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in
our political debate.
Across the country, individual churches like
my own and your own are sponsoring day care programs, building senior
centers, helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives, and rebuilding our
gulf coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
So the question
is, how do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between
religious and secular people of good will? It's going to take more work,
a lot more work than we've done so far. The tensions and the 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.
While I've already laid out some of the work that
progressive leaders need to do, I want to talk a little bit about what
conservative leaders need to do — some truths they need to acknowledge.
For
one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of
church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but
the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that
during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians
who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the
persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want
the established churches to impose their views on folks who were
getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It
was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about
not mingling government with religious, because they did not want
state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith
as they understood it.
Moreover, 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.
And even if we did
have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian
from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in
the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which
passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with
Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is
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 that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own
Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get
carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their
bibles.
This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that
the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal,
rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals
be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to
abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the
practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke
God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that
is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at
all.
Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the
inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic
democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to
persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It
involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental
level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the
impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to
God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on
such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy
making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing. And if you doubt
that, let me give you an example.
We all know the story of Abraham
and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and
without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an
altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.
Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.
But
it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a
roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call
the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to
take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear
what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those
experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with
those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or
basic reason.
Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion.
This goes for both sides.
Even
those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between
Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages — the Ten Commandments,
say, or a belief in Christ's divinity — are central to Christian faith,
while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to
accommodate modern life.
The American people intuitively
understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth
control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are
opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership
need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should
recognize this wisdom in their politics.
But a sense of proportion
should also guide those who police the boundaries between church and
state. Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of
separation - context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the
Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of
muttering the phrase "under God." I didn't. Having voluntary student
prayer groups use school property to meet should not be a threat, any
more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten
Democrats. And one can envision certain faith-based programs — targeting
ex-offenders or substance abusers — that offer a uniquely powerful way
of solving problems.
So we all have some work to do here. But I am
hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the
prejudices each of us bring to this debate. And I have faith that
millions of believing Americans want that to happen. No matter how
religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used
as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to
divide. They're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon.
Because in the end, that's not how they think about faith in their own
lives.
So let me end with just one other 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 the Republican agenda.
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 Web site,
which suggested that I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to
take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor 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."
Fair-minded words.
So I looked at my Web
site and found the offending words. In fairness to them, my staff had
written them using standard Democratic boilerplate language 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 fair-minded words. 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.
So I wrote back to the doctor, and I 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.
And that night, before
I went to bed I said a prayer of my own. It's a prayer I think I share
with a lot of Americans. 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.
