withallyourmind.net

Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, recently delivered the keynote address for Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America conference. Keith Plummer (here) and Al Mohler (here) both have interesting comments on the adress. Al Mohler points out a contradiction in the senator’s speech. Consider the following two excerpts from his speech:

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 Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, 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. So 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…

…This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all. Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible.

Obama states that believers do not have to “leave religion at the door”, throughout history have been “motivated by faith”, and “have repeatedly used religious language” in the political arena. After stating that the secularists are wrong, he then reverses stance and states that believers must “explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all”. The problem is, as Al Mohler points out, that this requirement simply institutionalizes secularism.

Mohler concludes with these thoughts:

But this is also demanding the impossible. Sen. Obama seems to believe in the myth of a universal reason and rationality that will be compelling to all persons of all faiths, including those of no faith at all. Such principles do not exist in any specific form usable for the making of public policy on, for example, matters of life and death like abortion and human embryo research.

This is secularism with a smile — offered in the form of an invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs.

The senator also made a very interesting and perceptive observation: “Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic society, we have no choice.”

That is a truly remarkable statement. He recognizes that those who believe in the authority and inerrancy of the Bible must, of necessity, make some arguments on the basis of that revelation. Nevertheless, this is just not to be allowed in our “pluralistic society.”