Which religiously-motivated Christian politician said the following recently:
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 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.
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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; it will also require changes in hearts and minds.
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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 Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, 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. 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.
Though Chuck Colson, James Dobson or Ralph Reed could have said something similar, these quotes are taken from a speech by liberal Sen. Barak Obama to the Sojourners Call to Renewal conference. I disagree with Sen. Obama on any number of things, but I stand with him in the sentiments expressed above. Let’s hope that more Democrats of faith step forward as Sen. Obama has for the legitimacy of faith-based dialogue in the public square.