6.4 Obama (6/26/06)
Obama, Barack (6/26/06) "Call to Renewal, Keynote Address." Sojourners/Call to Renewal "Building a Covenant for a New America" conference in Washington, D.C., June 26, 2006.
Quick Look
Author Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, elected in 2008 and reelected in 2012. In 1988, he entered Harvard Law School and was elected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year. He taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years (1992-2004). He served three terms in the Illinois Senate (1997-2004). He won election to the U.S. Senate representing Illinois in 2004. He has written two books: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. (1995) and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006). |
This Resource’s Key Interpretations and Insights Related to the Purposes of This Website
In this speech our center-left president makes an very important contribution to the postmodern understanding of healthy interrelationships between faith and politics in America.
(1) In this important speech Obama spells out his position on the primary focus of this website--how best to promote healthy relationships between faith & politics. He succinctly and accurately describes the unhealthy polarization on the issue as it existed in 2006, and he does so in terms that highlight the responsibilities of both the Right and the Left in creating it over the preceding decades (see p. 3).
(2) Obama proposes ways to move beyond the polarization that are basically compatible with those I’m trying to promote on this website. Since he is speaking at a conference of evangelical social justice progressives, most of the speech deals with what progressives need to understand and act upon that will make faith & politics healthier:
In this speech our center-left president makes an very important contribution to the postmodern understanding of healthy interrelationships between faith and politics in America.
(1) In this important speech Obama spells out his position on the primary focus of this website--how best to promote healthy relationships between faith & politics. He succinctly and accurately describes the unhealthy polarization on the issue as it existed in 2006, and he does so in terms that highlight the responsibilities of both the Right and the Left in creating it over the preceding decades (see p. 3).
(2) Obama proposes ways to move beyond the polarization that are basically compatible with those I’m trying to promote on this website. Since he is speaking at a conference of evangelical social justice progressives, most of the speech deals with what progressives need to understand and act upon that will make faith & politics healthier:
- There are good reasons why most Americans are religious (p. 3)
- How his journey toward finding his own faith community in an African-American, liberal social justice Christian church led to an understanding of faith & politics he believes is normative--we have a calling to witness for the moral values of our faiths in the public square and to stand up for social justice for all (p. 4)
- Other kinds of Christianity and other major world religions have similar kinds of religious groundings for their moral values that have political implications and, thus, also need to witness for them in the public square (p. 5)
- While the typical liberal idea that government should be involved in solving social problems is crucial, the typical conservative ideas that these problems are cultural and require personal responsibility to be solved are also key; and Obama affirms that morality is not exclusively religious (p. 6)
- Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square, and they can find much common ground with the moral values of religious persons and groups (pp. 6-7)
- The liberal bias against faith-based programs and the far-right’s view that American should be a Christian nation are challenged (p. 7)
Endorsement
The Call to Renewal Speech "may be the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican...Obama's talk will inevitably be read as a road map for Democrats struggling to speak authentically to people of faith. It's certainly that, but it would be better read as a suggestion that both parties begin to think differently about the power of faith." ~E. J. Dionne (my emphases) (See the bottom of the last page of my Highlight Review (link below) for the link to Dionne's entire review in The Washington Post, 6/30/06.)
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