From the mashup, Bill Maher's question dealt with religion. Obama, as he always does, said those who don't believe in God at all are a necessary and equal part of the discussion of faith and politics. He also talks about faith in a non-moralizing way that any person of good will can relate to. There isn't a Democrat who handles this issue better:
<Bill Maher: Sen. Obama, we've heard a lot of talk about Democrats courting the Christian evangelical vote. You yourself are running as a candidate of faith, and you've said many times that progressives must take the views of religious right seriously. If the Ten Commandments constitute our greatest source of morality, why is it there no commandments saying do not rape, do not torture, or do not commit incest, yet there are commandments against swearing, working on Sunday, and making statues to other gods?
Rose: Go ahead. Your answer.
Obama: Well, you know, I love Bill Maher, and he—I think rightly he points out some of the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of people who mix religion and politics sometimes. I have said it's important for Democrats to reach out to the faith community, and the reason is because 90 percent of Americans believe in God. It's a source of values. It's a source of their moral compass. And I know it's a source of strength for me and my family. And the way to do it, though, is to understand that, No. 1, people who are religious don't have a monopoly on morality, so they've got to be careful about being sanctimonious. No. 2 is that whatever values may be religiously motivated, if you're in the public square,
if you're involved in politics, I think you have to translate those moral precepts into something universal that people of different faiths or no faith at all can debate and argue and hopefully at some point come to a consensus. I think the mistake that's been made with respect to the religious right is a literalism that is so rigid that it does not allow for the possibility of somebody of a different faith or nonbeliever to engage in a dialogue. And on the other hand, I think it's important for us not to presume that faith has no part in the public square. Look, Martin Luther King, the abolitionists, the suffragettes. We have a long history of reform movements being grounded in that sense often religiously expressed that we have to extend beyond ourselves and our individual immediate self-interests to think about something larger.
Rose: And how is faith most influenced you as a human being?
Obama: Oh, you know, I think that I came to Christianity relatively late in life when I was already an adult. So, I wasn't steeped in organized religion when I was a child. What I found was that the values that had been taught to me by my mother and grandparents, the values I held most dear were expressed powerfully in the church and particularly the African-American church that I joined. But the faith that I have, that's, I think is most important is a basic optimism about people. That there's a core decency, what Lincoln called "better angels of our nature," that we can appeal to and that
we can't perfect ourselves, and we can't perfect the world, but we can continually strive to improve the world and treat each other with kindness and empathy. Even in the absence of perfection, and that is what helped to guide me into politics and that's what sustains me when I make mistakes or when I see some of those tough things that are going on around the world.>
http://www.slate.com/id/2173857/pagenum/2/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
