Much speculation has been made over whether Barack Obama’s Christianity is genuine or not, and it’s easy to understand both the care and the confusion. Most true-believing Christians want a leader guided by “God’s Word,” and many get uncomfortable when Obama does things like point out that making public policy out of Scripture could give the green light to slavery (Leviticus 25:44–46), make it mandatory to stone your children to death should they abandon the faith (Deuteronomy 13:6–10), and criminalize the sale of crabcake sandwiches (Leviticus 11:10–12).[1] Most nontheists, on the other hand, want a leader guided by logic and evidence alone, and many get uncomfortable when Obama calls himself a committed Christian, promises to expand the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,[2] and has his Presidential inauguration ceremony include prayers given by the Christian evangelist Rick Warren.
So what to make of Obama’s faith? My own conclusion is that although there are valid reasons to believe that he might well be a Christian (as religious faith is a complex area with many shades of gray), as well as valid reasons to believe that he might not (that his public declarations about being Christian could be for political reasons only), the best answer may be that it might not matter (given Obama’s determination that when it comes to public policy, religious values must be translated “into universal, rather than religion-specific, values … subject to argument and amenable to reason”[3]).
Reasons to Believe That Obama Might Not Be a Christian
The one thing Obama has made clear is that he is not a fundamentalist. In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, for example, he reveals (albeit via through the somewhat safe vehicle of describing his mother’s views) his skepticism of both (a) creationism and (b) Christianity’s claim of an exclusive path to salvation:
[My mother’s] experiences as a bookish, sensitive child growing up in small towns … reinforced [her] skepticism. Occasionally, for my benefit, she would recall the sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world’s people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation—and who in the same breath would insist that the earth and the heavens had been created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary (p. 203).
Obama’s rejection of the idea that Christianity is “the only path” (i.e., his rejection of a literal interpretation of John 14:6’s alleged line from Jesus that “I am the way … no man comes to the Father but by me”) was reiterated in his July 2008 interview with Newsweek:
It is a precept of my Christian faith that my redemption comes through Christ, but I am also a big believer in the Golden Rule, which I think is an essential pillar not only of my faith but of my values and my ideals and my experience here on Earth. I’ve said this before, and I know this raises questions in the minds of some evangelicals. I do not believe that my mother, who never formally embraced Christianity as far as I know … I do not believe she went to hell.”[4]
Obama also addresses those who would like to make public policy conform to “God’s Word,” and points out that this could lead to laws that are both cruel and absurd:
But let’s even assume that we only had Christians [and no Hindus, Muslims, agnostics, etc.] within our borders. … Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is all right and eating shellfish is an abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?[5]
Of course, someone can reject fundamentalism yet still be a Christian. But Obama’s critique of the Bible goes beyond mere skepticism of biblical literalism. In The Audacity of Hope, he drops not-so-subtle hints of his suspicion that the entire bible, as well as the so-called sacred scriptures from other organized religions, may well have originated from nowhere other than the human imagination. Note how Obama makes little distinction between the Bible, non-biblical holy texts, and folklore mythology:
In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part … Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its well-spring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.
In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist that she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well (p. 204).
Now, if Obama were writing from the position of a philosopher or a mythologist or anyone other than a politician, I would think that the cumulative effect of his four following observations:
(1) that organized religions are regional phenomena (the Arabs, Indians, Greeks, Africans, Chinese, Japanese, etc. all have their own versions of Divine Directions)
(2) that it seems dubious to suppose that one culture’s religion really came from Divinity, and inhabitants from elsewhere are just out of luck—eternally out of luck in the worst way—for being born in the wrong place (as implied by Obama’s remark about “the sanctimonious preachers who would dismiss three-quarters of the world’s people as ignorant heathens doomed to spend the afterlife in eternal damnation”)
(3) that unlike what one would expect from something inspired by an Omniscient Creator of the Cosmos, the Bible contains only primitive guesswork about the universe’s history (as implied by Obama’s remark about preachers who “would insist that the earth and the heavens had been created in seven days, all geologic and astrophysical evidence to the contrary”)
(4) that the Bible includes:
(a) injustices (Leviticus 25: 44–46—slaves are property and it’s okay to own them, as long as they’re not your fellow Israelites)
(b) cruelties (Deuteronomy 13:6–10—if your siblings or wife or children choose another religion, show them no pity as you stone them to death)
(c) absurdities (Leviticus 11: 10–12: eating sea creatures without fins and scales [e.g. crabs and lobsters] is “an abomination”)
—would lead to the conclusion that there’s nothing “divine” about the Bible: that it belongs in the same category as all of man’s other works of imagination. Or as Obama himself put it when describing his mother’s dismissal of organized religions:
Religion was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its well-spring, just one of the many ways—and not necessarily the best way—that man attempted to control the unknowable.
But although I would argue that this is the rational conclusion from a philosophical perspective, I will also argue that this is not the rational conclusion from a political perspective. For although philosophy, in its safe abstract world, may have the admirable goal of non-contradictory thinking, politics strives for the arguably higher goal of coming up with compromises that allow real world people with diametrically-opposed beliefs and interests to co-exist with as little conflict as possible.
Am I saying that even though there’s no rational reason to be a theist, nontheist politicians need to pretend to be theists—and Christian theists in particular—because politicians need votes, and we all know that most of America’s voters are Christians who won’t vote for non-Christians? Well, yes, I am … although it’s just a bit more complex than that, so before anyone labels my position as simply that of a cynical defeatist, allow me to present my defense of the time-honored and beneficial tradition of political double-talk and hypocrisy (or to cast it in a more positive light, the tradition of “political compromise”).
Look, for example, at the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuals. From the philosophical point of view, it’s contradictory if not incoherent: if gays are really that detrimental to the military, they shouldn’t be allowed to serve at all, even if they can be discreet about their sexual orientation. Conversely, if being gay really has no bearing on a person’s military abilities, homosexuals should be allowed to serve under the exact same conditions as heterosexuals. But politically, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” solution was a great breakthrough: it allowed parties with nearly irreconcilable differences to come to an agreement that satisfied at least some of the major concerns on both sides (the military got to keep its prohibition of open homosexual activity, and gay military personnel became legally protected from witch hunts and the accompanying dishonorable discharges).
Or look at America’s “clean needles” programs, in which addicts who are using illegal injection drugs can legally exchange their used syringes for clean ones. Philosophically (at least in the abstract sense of the word), this is nonsensical: we’re taking the contradictory stance that people will be prosecuted for using illegal substances such as heroin, but if they walk into these clinics with used needles—clear evidence of abuse—we’ll not only turn a blind eye, but we’ll give them shiny new needles to shoot up with (which they’d better not be caught using!). Philosophically illogical or not, however, this hypocrisy comes with the societal benefit of reducing the transmission of AIDS: a goal worthier than legal consistency.
Or let’s take the tension between China and the United States back in April 2001 when the pilot of a Chinese fighter plane died after colliding with an American surveillance plane (the plane was flying off the coast of China in an area that China claimed as Chinese territory, and America claimed as international). China said that until America made a formal apology for its crime, the twenty-four members of the surveillance plane would remain captive in Chinese custody. America, in turn, insisted that its surveillance plane was flying in international airspace, that the collision was the Chinese pilot’s fault for flying too close, and that China was the one who was now committing a crime by illegally imprisoning the American crew. Neither side wanted to back down and thus appear weak before their respective countries, but the problem was resolved peacefully thanks to linguistic ambiguity. America’s official statement expressed “regret” about the pilot’s loss of life, China translated “regret” as an apology, America in turn made no comment about the Chinese translation, and the twenty-four American crew members were released.
Now, I could summarize this exchange as:
AMERICA: We don’t apologize because we did no wrong, but we regret the loss of the pilot’s life.
CHINA: Glad to hear that you’ve confessed your guilt!
AMERICA: Ahh, whatever.
—and say that it makes zero sense in the world of pure logic. But in the real life world of politics, it makes 100% sense, in that it may well have been a literal life-saver.
Many will point out that this “the end justifies the means” approach is dangerous, as it can serve to rationalize all sorts of ethical horrors in the name of political expediency. That’s true enough … but the opposite mantra of “the means can never be justified by the ends” is equally dangerous—each situation needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis and weighed for all pros and cons.
As for looking at the “ends” vs. the “means” when it comes to winning a presidential election, note that the characteristics we want from a president pull us in opposite directions (at least from my biased nontheistic viewpoint). On the one hand, we want a politician who is as intelligent and rational as possible—and from my perspective (which I prefer to call “biased” rather than “smug,” although one could argue that both apply), this means someone who doesn’t believe that an ancient text full of contradictions and scientific errors and ethnocentric absurdities could possibly be the work of an Omniscient and Omnipotent Creator. On the other hand, we want a person who will actually get elected, and once elected, will lead effectively. And in a predominantly Christian nation, this means (at least according to poll after poll after poll[6]) that a presidential candidate must at least claim to be Christian (and preferably mainstream Christian[7]). So for nontheists who would like to see fellow nontheists in office, electing a closet nontheist may be the best bet compromise.
TANGENTIAL NOTE: even though I believe that being a theist includes a certain degree of being guided by delusion and wishful thinking, one thing that continually surprises me about people is how good we are at compartmentalizing our beliefs. So if being a theist could reliably be equated with a lack of rational thought in other areas as well, then I would think it’s important to have a nontheist in office … but I have to admit that I haven’t found this to be the case. Thanks to compartmentalization, theists can just tuck that irrational part of their thought process into a small area (perhaps dragging it out on selective Sunday mornings), and then be completely rational in every other aspect of life. And being an atheist is certainly no guarantee that someone is rational in other aspects of life, or is even an atheist for rational reasons. So as long as I see that candidates have sufficient respect for the separation between church and state, their religious beliefs play little role in my decision of whom to support.
Back on track—let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that Obama’s professed Christianity really is for political reasons only. If so, why does he have to be so supportive of faith: repeatedly using religious imagery (he refers to helping others as “the Lord’s work”), promising millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to churches for his “President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships” program,” and giving Rick Warren—the Christian evangelist who equates homosexuality with bestiality and incest—such a prominent role at the presidential swearing-in ceremony?
My own conclusion is that these displays of religiosity simply make good political sense when it comes to being the leader of Christian-dominated nation. But even though I’m an atheist, I don’t think of Obama as “pandering” or “selling out.” Rather, I actually admire the way he doesn’t alienate the Christian masses, and at the same time manages to harness their faith in ways that I see as mostly positive.
In the below excerpt from Obama’s website (www.barackobama.com), note that when he talks about the “Lord’s work” he puts it in terms not of spreading the message that salvation comes from Christ alone, but about things like ensuring benefits for veterans, rebuilding communities destroyed by natural disasters, and working to prevent ex-prisoners from returning to crime. And when he talks about his “President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships” program, note that he spells out the terms in which separation between church and state can be maintained:
I came to see my faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work.
There are millions of Americans who share a similar view of their faith, who feel they have an obligation to help others. And they’re making a difference in communities all across this country—through initiatives like Ready4Work, which is helping ensure that ex-offenders don’t return to a life of crime; or Catholic Charities, which is feeding the hungry and making sure we don’t have homeless veterans sleeping on the streets of Chicago; or the good work that’s being done by a coalition of religious groups to rebuild New Orleans.
You see, while these groups are often made up of folks who’ve come together around a common faith, they’re usually working to help people of all faiths or of no faith at all. And they’re particularly well-placed to offer help. As I’ve said many times, I believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.
That’s why Washington needs to draw on them. The fact is, the challenges we face today—from saving our planet to ending poverty—are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need all hands on deck.
I’m not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits. And I’m not saying that they’re somehow better at lifting people up. What I’m saying is that we all have to work together—Christian and Jew, Hindu and Muslim; believer and non-believer alike—to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square … make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea—so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them—or against the people you hire—on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. [8]
As for Obama asking Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation, well, I can understand why many people, particularly gay rights activists,[9] are offended by that. But Rick Warren is complex in his own right, because Warren is one who also believes, like Obama, in channeling the church’s energies to help solve secular problems. Even though Warren adopts the church’s traditional stance on homosexuality and abortion, he often makes these issues take a back seat to social action projects like expanding educational opportunities for the poor, helping to reduce international poverty and disease, and working to stop the spread of AIDS and global warming.
Still, many secular people (and religious liberals) feel that Warren’s inflammatory words on homosexuality—as well as his support for Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in his home state of California—overshadow all positive aspects of his social activism. But as I see it, what’s a pastor to do: say the Bible is wrong? After all, Warren’s anti-gay sentiments are all right there in the Good Book: Leviticus 20:11–17 describes homosexuality, incest, and bestiality alike as “abominations.” Warren’s condemnations are actually rather mild, in that he doesn’t follow through with the Bible’s instructions that all those who commit such offenses—including adulterers (Leviticus 20:10)—should be put to death.
In the USA Today article “Obama defends inaugural invitation to Warren,” Obama’s response to protesters includes some fuzzy language—that our “noisy and opinionated” diversity is “part of the magic of this country”—that doesn’t quite succeed, at least for me, in downplaying the fact that Warren’s influence in getting Proposition 8 passed has contributed to depriving the gay community of its rights:
“During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented,” said Obama … “And that’s how it should be because that’s what America is about. That’s part of the magic of this country — that we are diverse and noisy and opinionated.”
Yet Obama also has also taken measures to counteract perceptions that inviting Rick Warren means that Obama is endorsing Warren’s biblical-based bigotry. For one, Obama has requested that his ceremony’s closing prayers will be led by Joseph Lowery, a minister who has spoken out in favor of gay clergy. The USA Today article includes the following observations from Eddie Glaude, a professor of religion at Princeton University:
By choosing Warren and Lowery as the religious bookends to the inaugural ceremony, “he’s reaching across a wide swath of the American religious community,” Glaude says. “[It’s] a sign of how shrewd he is.”
Second, Obama also specifies that he remains a “fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” He adds, however, that his and Warren’s clash in the area of gay rights doesn’t eliminate all common ground:
We’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is be able to create an atmosphere … where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.[10]
The advantages of inviting Warren are clear: he is arguably the most influential evangelist in the country at the moment (his book The Purpose Driven Life is one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time, selling over 20 million copies), and having him deliver the inaugural invocation strengthens Obama’s support from Warren’s millions of Christian fans (helping to lessen the impact from the attacks Obama has received from other influential evangelists, such as James Dobson[11]). The disadvantages are also being made clear from the numerous protests from those insulted by the perceived legitimacy bestowed upon Warren’s anti-gay sentiments, but I’d like to think that Obama’s outspoken defense of gay rights, as well as the ceremony’s inclusion of Joseph Lowery, succeeds in taking at least some of the sting away from that insult.
Given that politicians will be criticized for whatever stance they take when it comes to mixing religion and politics, Obama admits the temptation for politicians to try to shy away from the subject of religion altogether (the following excerpts are all from The Audacity of Hope):
Those of us in public office 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 on issues like abortion or school prayer (p. 213).
—and indirectly (that is, by mentioning the views of “some on the left”), Obama even acknowledges the danger of mixing political power with something as “inherently irrational and intolerant” as religion:
Some on the left (although not those in public office) go further [than simply avoiding religion], dismissing religion in the public square as inherently irrational, intolerant, and therefore dangerous … (p. 213).
But Obama also points out the greater danger—the “bad politics”—of a politician taking such a secular approach that s/he appears to neglect the religious concerns of the devout. For one, he writes, this leaves a dangerous vacuum:
… over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people, and so avoid joining a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.
To begin with, it’s bad politics. There are a whole lot of religious people in America … According to the most recent surveys, 95% of Americans believe in God, more than two-thirds belong to a church … and substantially more people believe in angels than believe in evolution … When we abandon the field of religious discourse … 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 toward one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts … others will fill the vacuum. And those who do are likely to be those with the most insular views of faith, or who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends (pp. 213, 214, 198).
As an example of a negative political repercussion of ignoring the concerns of the faithful, Obama recaps the history of how the Republican Party started taking advantage of this vacuum in the 1980s, and “harvested the crop” of alienated Christians:
By the time the sixties rolled around, many mainstream Protestant and Catholic leaders had concluded that if American’s religious institutions were to survive, they would have to make themselves “relevant” to changing times—by accommodating church doctrine to science … Academics, journalists, and purveyors of popular culture … failed to appreciate the continuing role that all manner of religious expression played in communities across the country.
What happened? … Pushed out of sight but still throbbing with vitality throughout the heartland and the Bible Belt, a parallel universe emerged, a world not only of revivals and thriving ministries but also of Christian television, radio, universities, publishers, and entertainment, all of which allowed the devout to ignore the popular culture as surely as they were being ignored.
[Yet social upheavals such as] the women’s movement, the sexual revolution, the increasing assertiveness of gays and lesbians, … Roe v. Wade, dismantling segregation, eliminating prayer in schools … seemed a direct challenge to the church’s teaching about marriage, sexuality, and the proper roles of men and women. Feeling mocked and under attack, conservative Christians found it no longer possible to insulate themselves from the country’s broader political and cultural trends. … it was the Republican Party, with its increasing emphasis on tradition, order, and “family values,” that was best positioned to harvest this crop of politically awakened evangelicals and mobilize them against the liberal orthodoxy.
The story of how Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and finally Karl Rove and George W. Bush mobilized this army of Christian foot soldiers need not be repeated here (pp. 199 – 201).
Back once again to Rick Warren: by welcoming, rather than excluding, such an influential evangelist to be at least a symbolic part of his presidency, Obama is increasing the likelihood that the Christian masses will not feel alienated, and will be less likely to be “harvested” by ultra right-wing fundamentalists with “the most insular [i.e., the most narrow-minded] views of faith”: fundamentalists—such as Dobson[12]—that make Warren look tame in comparison.
So, it may well be that Obama’s position on religion is that of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, who said: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
On the other hand …
Reasons to Believe that Obama Might Be a Christian
My experience with several years of interviewing Christians[13] is that faith—even among Christians in the exact same sect—is maddeningly complex, non-uniform, and comes in many shades of gray. For although it’s common for fundamentalist Christians to claim that their faith casts away all doubt—that faith overrides even the most solid contradictory evidence—many non-fundamentalists see doubt as something they can allow space for while maintaining their Christianity. In The Audacity of Hope‘s chapter on “Faith,” for example, Obama specifically writes, “faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts” (p. 207). He ends the chapter with ruminations on exactly how he should have responded to his young daughter’s question about death, admitting his doubts about the answers offered by his religion:
I wonder whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn’t sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang (p. 226).
In a Newsweek interview, Obama goes as far as admitting that his religious views might be wrong in every way:
I’m on my own faith journey and I’m searching. I leave open the possibility that I’m entirely wrong.[14]
The fact that Obama makes repeated mention of his doubts is one of the reasons I don’t rule out the possibility that he might indeed be sincere when he calls himself a Christian: it seems that he’d be less likely to dwell on such doubts if his Christianity were strictly political. Could it be a part of his calculated act? I suppose it could … that’s why I’m calling this section “reasons to believe that Obama might be a Christian.” More importantly, however, is my next section, which present my reasons for why I believe it might not matter.
Reasons to Believe that Obama’s Christianity (or lack of) Might Not Matter
Obama’s solution to balancing the demands of the religious world with the secular is that the religiously-motivated can cite their faith as the source of their morals, but those values must be translated “into universal, rather than religion-specific, values” (again, the following excerpts are all from The Audacity of Hope):
What our deliberative, pluralistic democracy demands is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals must be subject to argument and amenable to reason. If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons and seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will and expect that argument to carry the day. If I want others to listen to me, then I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
For those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do, such rules of engagement may seem just one more example of the tyranny of the secular and material worlds over the sacred and eternal. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice (p. 219).
Obama also cites positive ways that religion can be used in conjunction with politics, at least when religion is restricted to using its imagery as a vehicle for understanding morality:
Scrub language of all religious content and 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 reference 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 (p. 214).[15]
But when it comes to looking for Scripture to provide specifics, Obama notes that no one can hear “God’s voice” when it speaks in someone else’s head, so “the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know”:
The story of Abraham and Isaac offers a simple but powerful example. According to the Bible, Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his “only son, Isaac, whom you love,” as a burnt offering. Without argument, Abraham takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded.
Of course, we know the happy ending—God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute. Abraham has passed God’s test of devotion. He becomes a model of fidelity to God, and his great faith is rewarded through future generations. And yet it is fair to say that if any of us saw a 21st century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle him down; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we would expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse. We would do so because God doesn’t reveal Himself or His angels to all of us in a single moment. 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 are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true—as individuals or communities of faith—will be true for us alone (p. 220).
From my own atheistic perspective, the idea that religious values should be translated into what we might call “humanistic values” simply means that those “humanistic values” are traveling full circle. That is, from the nontheistic viewpoint, morals pre-date man’s creation of religion, and even pre-date humanity itself. Although natural selection certainly involves no small amount of violent competition, the struggle for survival also demands a degree of compassion and cooperation (cooperative traits are widespread in just about all animals that live in social groups: social animals need to band together to raise their young, warn each other of predators, and hunt their food and fight their enemies). Religious founders take innate tendencies such as care & cooperation and give them a formal structure by putting them in the mouths of their gods, but religion is only underlining pre-existing capacities.[16] (Religion underlines, of course, not only natural selection’s peace-enhancing traits like “be good to your kin” [e.g. the Ten Commandments’ prohibition on murder, at least within the community], but also its violent traits, such as the ability to be utterly ruthless with outsiders [e.g. the alleged instructions from the alleged Jehovah to go into the Promised Land and murder every man, woman, and child].)
So from the strictly logical perspective, using religion as a source for morals is like going through an unnecessary middleman, and one that comes with negative baggage as well (particularly when it comes to gay rights, stem cell research, science in the classroom, fighting “God’s wars,” etc.). But from a political perspective, we neglect the concerns of the devout at our peril—at the cost of having zero influence.
So I for one am happy to have a president who has managed not to alienate most of our religious fellow Americans, yet who has also laid out strong arguments for why scripture cannot dictate public policy, and who has even managed to project some well-placed hints of religious skepticism along the way. And to all this I say, “Amen!”
[1] These remarks are from page 218 of Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, and included in his June 2006 “Call to Renewal” Keynote Address. In response, the evangelical leader James Dobson accused Obama of “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology” (“James Dobson Says Obama ‘Distorting’ Bible,” NPR.org, 25-Jun-2008).
[2] Obama’s updated office will be called the “President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.”
[3] Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p. 219.
[4] Lisa Miller and Richard Wolffe, “Finding His Faith.” Newsweek, 21-Jul-2008.
[5] Obama, The Audacity of Hope, p. 218.
[6] Austin Cline, “Gallup Polls & Other Surveys on American Attitudes Towards Atheists: Over 40 Years of Research Show Atheists Are Despised, Distrusted.” (http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheistSurveys.htm)
Pulsar Research & Consulting, “TIME Poll: Survey on Faith and the Presidential Election,” May 10-13, 2007 (www.pulsarresearch.com/PDF/TIME_Report.pdf)
[7] James Joyner, “Black President More Likely than Mormon or Atheist” (a 20-Feb-2007 article that draws on polls taken by Gallup) http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/black_president_more_likely_than_mormon_or_atheist_/
[8] “Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” (http://www.barackobama.com/2008/07/01/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_86.php)
[9] Not all gay activists are offended—see footnote 12 for comments of support for Rick Warren by Jonathan Rauch, author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America.
[11] In addition to Dobson’s accusation that Obama “deliberately distorts the Bible” (NPR.org, 25-Jun-2008), Dobson also released an attack called Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America—a hypothetical letter from a Christian in the year 2012. The letter describes a nightmarish America after four years of Obama’s rule: the removal of obscenity laws results in television broadcasts of explicit sex acts 24 hours a day, al-Qaida takes over Iraq, and terrorist bombs kill thousands in U.S. cities. And to top it off, homosexual marriages become the norm in all 50 states, and the Boy Scouts have disbanded rather than obey a decision forcing them to allow homosexual scoutmasters.
[12] Just as I was getting ready to submit this post to “Clashing Culture,” I came across an excellent analysis comparing Dobson and Warren in a blog from Jonathan Rauch (author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America). I’m too lazy to work Rauch’s observations properly into this post, but his commentary (http://www.indegayforum.org/blog/show/31681.html) is too good for me to leave it out altogether:
[Dobson’s Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America is] long and hysterical—another sign of how beleaguered the hard-core Christian Right is feeling. Still more revealing, I count 18 paragraphs on homosexuality and gay marriage, versus four on abortion (aka, from a pro-life point of view, murder of babies). I found no instances of the word “divorce.” “Adultery”? You gotta be kidding.
This is the kind of anti-gay obsessiveness and upside-down prioritizing that Rick Warren and others of his ilk and generation are moving away from. The more I think about Obama’s choice of Warren to lead the inaugural prayer, the more I like it. Culturally, the moment is right to reach out to reachable evangelicals and marginalize the hysterics and obsessives who have all but monopolized their movement. The cultural left doesn’t understand the difference between Warren and Dobson, but evangelicals sure will. And they’ll know Obama and Warren are publicly declaring Dobsonism obsolete.”
It’s also worth reading Rauch’s prior blog post, called “James Dobson He Ain’t”—http://www.indegayforum.org/blog/show/31676.html.
[13] The interviews were for my book, Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer (a dialogue between a Christian apologist and a Socratic skeptic).
[14] Lisa Miller and Richard Wolffe, “Finding His Faith.” Newsweek, 21-Jul-2008.
[15] Just for balance, I would have also liked for Obama to mention how this phenomenon can also occur outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and cite how Gandhi’s political use of Hinduism was key in India’s incredible and unprecedented non-violent defeat of the militarily-superior Great Britain.
[16] I explore this subject further in “The Roots of Morality,” endnote 12 of Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer (p. 213).
Clashing Culture 