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obama: the role of faith in political conversation

obama: the role of faith in political conversation

Tolerance and passionate faith are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe the opposite is true. Passionate believers, genuine believers, are more tolerant people, because they understand how tolerant God has been with them!

It is refreshing to hear Sen. Barack Obama, a Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ, speak about his faith and its role in framing his political agenda … and his response to folks who may not share his political agenda. He is not apologetic about his faith. Neither is he dismissive of other people’s faith.

He is right. We need a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this nation, about the role of faith in shaping our values … not slogans and sound bites and accusations, but a conversation, a conversation that includes both honest sharing and respectful listening.

Read this excerpt from his keynote address at Pentecost 2006, sponsored by Call to Renewal, a movement affiliated with the Sojourners Community in Washington D.C. Or read the entire address: Keynote Address: Sen. Barack Obama.

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 President Bush’s foreign policy.

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.” He 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.”

I checked my Web site and found the offending words. My staff had written them 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 reasonable terms – 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.

I wrote back to the doctor and 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.

the sami got me thinking

the sami got me thinking

Sami dressLast evening my wife and I attended a Sons of Norway gathering as guests of some friends of ours. We shared a catered meal, listened as members conducted club business, and watched with them a documentary on the recent history of the Sami, an indigenous people of northern Scandinavia and far northwest Russia, known for their reindeer-herding, fishing, and colorful dress, among other things. (Photo courtesy: Trym Ivar Bergsmo/Finnmark Tourist Board; click on the photo to see a larger image.)

It was a troubling film. The story of the Sami is so much like the story of other indigenous peoples — in Australia, in Africa, in South America, and on this continent. They are pushed aside, displaced from traditional lands, absorbed or oppressed by the dominant culture. Traditional means of economic production often become unavailable to them, because of the encroachment of competing interests or the degradation of natural resources. They are forcibly “re-educated” in the language and customs of the dominant culture, and their own language and culture are threatened with extinction.

The Sami have done well, adjusting to a new way of life, surviving both within and alongside the European cultures of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia, while preserving their own distinctive ways and forging a stronger social and political unity. But along the way, they have been caricatured, belittled, marginalized, and mocked. Just like the aborigines of Australia or the Xhosa of South Africa or the Sioux of North America, they have been treated as a lower form of humanity and their culture demeaned and expunged.

What is it about us? What is it about all of us that is so intolerant of diversity? What is it that makes us want to homogenize culture, to marginalize or eradicate or utterly transform what we find peculiar? We still do it. We disrespect immigrant peoples by proposing “English as official language” laws, supposedly to aid their assimilation into American culture, but oppressors and cultural elitists have always supposed they know what is best for everybody else. We export our preferred economic model and our preferred political model, sometimes by moral persuasion, sometimes by leveraging our power and influence, and sometimes by plain use of force. But we are not uniquely at fault in this. It seems no culture can resist the impulse to see itself as superior to any other culture with which it comes in contact, and to seek, if possible, to dominate and “convert” their “unfortunate” neighbors.

It is more than troubling. It causes me doubt and shame … because Christians, at least Christians in name, have too often been among the “culture-killers.” But I cannot believe, I do not believe, that such behavior is a product of Christian faith itself. This is not the way of Christ or the way of Christ’s faithful followers. Authentic faith does not encourage homogeneity, but diversity: The Spirit’s presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all. And again: There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ, which is not to denigrate the differences between people, but to say that differences in gender or race or social status offer no reason to make distinctions. We are one in Christ; in Christ we have equal value, equal importance … we are equally loved. And what shall we say to the God who is the creator of all living things, of every human person: You may think this is good, but we know better!”?

May God forgive us our cultural biases and our haste in equating “foreign” with “inferior.” And may our witness to Jesus be about spreading the good news of the gospel of peace, not about spreading our particular brand of culture.

belief and intolerance

belief and intolerance

Does religious conviction breed intolerance?

If that were true, then the deeper and stronger my beliefs become, the more intolerant I become of people different from me. But I find just the opposite to be true. The more I know Jesus, the more I become like Jesus — opening my heart and arms to all kinds of different people, especially those the rest of society, even religious society, wants to push aside.

Certainly religion has been a root cause of war and conflict among groups of people … but not religion itself. It is bad religion that leads to division and conflict! It is weak belief that is intolerant, because it is not strong enough to hold itself together in the face of opposition and challenge and so must dismiss and disregard anything that threatens it!

The path to a more tolerant and peaceful world is not less religious conviction, but better religious conviction! I don’t love my neighbor best by setting my belief aside, but by strengthening it. True believers do not start crusades. It would be rather strange, would it not, if Jesus’ truest followers behaved least like him!