Obama Seeks to Connect With Evangelicals

By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 02:36:42 PM EST
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The Timesonline (UK) has a feature article on Barak Obama:

Obama will appear on Friday at the Saddleback church in Lake Forest, California, where at least 20,000 conservative Christians gather each week for services led by Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical author of the bestselling inspirational book The Purpose Driven Life.

At first glance Warren and Obama appear the unlikeliest of allies — the conservative white preacher and the liberal black Democrat — yet aides to both confirmed last week that they have formed an intriguing friendship that may prove a key element in the next presidential campaign.

Bible-thumping didn't get Harold Ford elected. Can it help Obama?

Obama has made a point of courting evangelical Christians. A speech he delivered to a Christian group at a Washington church last June was described by the Washingtonian magazine as “perhaps the most important dissection of the role of faith made by any Democratic politician in half a century”.

In a bestselling new memoir, The Audacity of Hope, and in numerous television interviews, he has urged his Democratic colleagues not to “avoid the conversation about religious values”.

He said recently: “I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives. We need to understand that Americans are a religious people. Substantially more Americans believe in angels than in evolution.”

No one is suggesting that people shouldn't have faith. The issue to me is using faith as a tool for political advantage. Government and religion and faith should be separate.

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Obama Seeks to Connect With Evangelicals | 20 comments (20 topical)

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Church and State -- BFF! (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by DavidDvorkin on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 04:13:26 PM EST

Yeah, that's what we need: a tighter relationship between the White House and the theocrats.

If Obama wins the nomination, I'm sure I'll vote for him, since I'm sure the Republicans will nominate someone I'll despise. (They have a tendency to do that.) But I'll be holding my nose while I vote.

Will any candidate speak out against the influence of religion? Will they all pay lip service to the preachers and to religiosity? It does look that way.

Famous for being famous (none / 0) (#2)
by jimakaPPJ on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 05:34:58 PM EST

Obama is famous for being famous. When push comes to shove the Demos won't nominate him.


: No (none / 0) (#18)
by scarshapedstar on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 05:49:06 PM EST

He's famous for giving a good speech. Kinda like Bush was after his national therapy session atop the bodies at the WTC once he mustered up the courage to make an appearance. Curiously, neither of them have done much good after their big moments in the sun.

but (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by soccerdad on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 05:39:41 PM EST

The issue to me is using faith as a tool for political advantage. Government and religion and faith should be separate.

I'm woundering if these are 2 different issues. For example, some evangelicals are pro-enviornment. Whats wrong with Dems addressing those groups and saying look your values are closer to ours.

The problem is going to a point where the evengelicals expect to run the country or have policy made in their favor. But not all evangelicals are Dominionists.

Not all evangelicals are the same.

Religious values (5.00 / 1) (#6)
by Dadler on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 09:00:16 PM EST

Every value organized religion wants to claim as "theirs" was formulated by human beings BEFORE religion ever came into being. The ideas came first, they wrote them down later.

When Obama puts this discussion in the context of the mystery of existence (which we are all burdened with, whatever our faith or lack thereof), then I'll be surprised.

Be a good person, be more generous than you have to be, be kind, etc. You don't need mega-churches and rock bands and big video screens to figure it out.

: The ideas came first (4.00 / 1) (#7)
by Edger on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 09:23:42 PM EST

BILL MOYERS ON FAITH & REASON (video & transcript)

SALMAN RUSHDIE: ...My view has been, quite simply, that religion has been one of the ways in which human beings, throughout history, have tried to codify and organize their moral sense of the world. But that's to say, I would argue, that our sense of good and evil, our sense of right and wrong, our moral sense precedes religion. It's not created by it. It is, in fact, what creates our need for religion.
...
BILL MOYERS: Moral as opposed to religious-- as a religious belief might confirm it, might condone that.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: Exactly. So my view is that morality is previous to religion. You know, and that religion is an expression of various people at various times' relationship with morality.
BILL MOYERS: What is morality?
SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, it's as I see it, I think, something intrinsic in us, which wishes to distinguish between right and wrong. And I think we are hard-wired to it. You know, in the way that scientists now believe that language is an instinct. That we're hard-wired to develop it. You know. And I think that morality is somewhere in there in the DNA. That we are created, born as creatures who wish to know is it okay to do this or not okay to do this, you know. And we ask ourselves that question all the time. And religion is one of the answers.

Video game ... (5.00 / 1) (#11)
by mreyn on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 07:44:29 AM EST

is the latest platform for Tim LaHay'es apocalyptic nightmare 'Left Behind', not Rick Warren. I would be surprised to find Warren is pimping this thing.

Don' be surprised... (none / 0) (#12)
by Edger on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 08:04:03 AM EST

Google: Rick Warren kill "praise the lord"

Left Behind Video 'Game' (youtube)


Warren is ducking, but not promoting (none / 0) (#14)
by quihana on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 10:10:29 AM EST

Following the links Edger provides suggests that Rev. Warren is certainly culpable for not denouncing the vileness of this game, but can't be tagged with actually promoting it. His organization has taken steps to dissociate itself from the game, but has avoided condemning it.


: SEMANTICS... (5.00 / 1) (#15)
by Edger on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 10:39:56 AM EST

Rick Warren is playing responsibility avoidance semantic games and IMO likely would not be "distancing" himself or "ducking" had not Talk to Action brought public attention to the vileness of Rick Warren.
The Purpose Driven Life Takers (Part 1)

Time magazine has described Mr. Warren as one of the nation's most influential Evangelical Christian leaders. He describes himself as a "stealth evangelist" and describes his training programs as "a stealth movement, that's flying beneath the radar, that's changing literally hundreds, even thousands of churches around the world." He claims that he has sold tens of millions of copies of The Purpose Driven Life by developing a worldwide network of pastors.
The international director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church, Mark Carver, is a former investment banker who serves on the Advisory Board of the corporation created in October 2001 to develop and market this game. The creators plan to market their game using the same network marketing techniques that Mr. Warren used to turn The Purpose Driven Life into a commercial success. For example, they plan to distribute their merchandise through pastoral networks, especially mega-churches.
[Update: Mark Carver, a top aide to Mr. Warren, resigned as an adviser to Left Behind Games on June 5, 2006, and asked that the game developer remove the Purpose Driven Ministries name brand from its web site. These abrupt moves came in response to pressure from Talk to Action, as reported in the third essay in this series, "Revelation and Resignation (Part 3)".

Used to be separation between Church and State (5.00 / 1) (#19)
by baked potato on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 06:25:06 PM EST

We were taught a long time ago (even in my Catholic school!) about the separation of Church and State.

But crackpot centrism knows no bounds, eh Obama?

Evangelicals are not all the same (4.00 / 1) (#4)
by mreyn on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 06:13:39 PM EST

Furthering soccerdad's comment, Rick Warren and other megachurch leaders within his orbit are looked upon by the GOP Religious Right machine with jaundiced, often hostile, eyes--in fact there have been continuing attacks on his "Purpose Driven" ministry for some time out of the Dominionist/fundamentalist camp. By broadening the issues which evangelical Christians should be addressing--the environment, poverty, social justice--Warren and company now present a formidable threat to the perceived hegemony of Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Paul Weyrich and their fellow uber-right ideologues in the Council for National Policy and the Republican Study Committee. For Obama to venture into Saddleback for this conference seems obvious, regardless if he obtains the nomination. As for "pandering", I don't see it, having reviewed the topics to be considered.

Evangelical outreach (4.00 / 1) (#5)
by quihana on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 08:19:29 PM EST

The evangelicals I know would say that there is no way for them to separate their faith from their lives; it pervades everything they do. Given that, if one wants to include these folks when trying to draw people together in our society, a.k.a. body politic, in an effort to marshall support for the things we mutually believe in, and there are such things, then we need to find approaches that don't require some people to check their faith at the door, or others to genuflect unwillingly. The alternative is to say to such people, "You are not wanted here". This would be both an error and a shame. Dobson and his ilk do not speak for all evangelicals; but as long as we, by our words and actions, encourage the mistaken notion that we on the left are "anti-religion", we are driving away a good chunk of the population, and helping the Dobsons of the world retain their influence. Let's not stick every evangelical with the label of theocrat.

Senator Obama is one of a handful of leaders who can effectively bridge that divide, or at least has the credibility to make the attempt. I think we do ourselves no favors, and the senator an injustice, to leap to the conclusion that every speech he gives is a calculated pander. Is no one in politics allowed the benefit of the doubt that they may have beliefs and values that didn't come out of a strategic playbook?

But (5.00 / 2) (#8)
by aw on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 09:34:08 PM EST

but as long as we, by our words and actions, encourage the mistaken notion that we on the left are "anti-religion",

If it is a mistaken notion (and it is) then we should correct it, but not by bending over backwards to accomodate the religious at the expense of the rest of us. We can discuss values without their being specific religious values. Why can't those who can't separate their faith from their lives just support causes and candidates they agree with like everyone else without constantly pounding the religious aspect of it.

The rest of us badly need a break from this. We've had more than enough already.


: And there is no reason not to... (none / 0) (#9)
by Edger on Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 09:44:18 PM EST

...talk to religious people about issues that they are concerned about that non-religious people are concerned about. We don't have to agree on a religion to be able to discuss, say, industrial impacts on the environment, or health care, or any other issue, without getting into a religious debate.

Who is pushing Obama? (4.00 / 1) (#16)
by aw on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 11:03:36 AM EST

Who exactly is it that's pushing Obama anyway? I don't know anyone who says Obama should be president. He makes one blockbuster speech at the DNC in 2004 and boom--Obama for President. But why?

I agree he's a rising star, but he's still mostly a blank slate to me. When he shows some actual leadership and accomplishments, not just pretty talk, I will be willing to consider him. Until then, uh-uh.

One of the side (1.00 / 1) (#10)
by ron on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 03:07:58 AM EST

effects or interesting bits of knowledge of this is that the area Saddleback is in is as red as they get. I live near this church and go by it every single day. Make no mistake the people who go to this massive church and grounds are part of the right wing message machine. Think massive thought processing factories ala the Borg and you get the image that is Saddleback.

Rick Warren is part of that but hides his Christian video game crusade behind a facade of decency and deception. People who respect him as somehow different are shocked when shown his game of kill the non-believers.

Obama venturing there and being part of this is strange for no other reason than wondering how it all came about and who approached whom.

"...driv[ing] by everyday" is hardly... (none / 0) (#17)
by Bill Arnett on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 01:38:41 PM EST

...the preferred method of ascertaining the intent or philosophy of a church.

Especially when you incorrectly state something as fact that is not true. A thirty second "the google" search through the Internets tubes revealed this:

The international director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church, Mark Carver, is a former investment banker who serves on the Advisory Board of the corporation created in October 2001 to develop and market this game. The creators plan to market their game using the same network marketing techniques that Mr. Warren used to turn The Purpose Driven Life into a commercial success. For example, they plan to distribute their merchandise through pastoral networks, especially mega-churches.
[Update: Mark Carver, a top aide to Mr. Warren, resigned as an adviser to Left Behind Games on June 5, 2006, and asked that the game developer remove the Purpose Driven Ministries name brand from its web site. These abrupt moves came in response to pressure from Talk to Action, as reported in the third essay in this series, "Revelation and Resignation (Part 3)". Here is a screen shot from the Left Behind Games site taken before June 5, showing Mr. Carver's name and invoking the name brand of Purpose Driven Church, which the site describes in some detail. -- JH]

We all make mistakes, but when maligning someone or something it is important to verify your charges.


: Thanks for supplying up to date (none / 0) (#20)
by ron on Tue Jan 01, 2008 at 03:45:24 PM EST

information but it's a bit of a cheap shot to take my using old facts as a reason to infer that I was use the fact that I drive by the church every day as "the preferred method of ascertaining the intent or philosophy of a church". Did you really think I was doing that or did you just take the perfect opportunity to fling a zinger at me?
I communicated less than adequately and didn't finish my thought that would've included "I know more than a few people who belong to the church". I would think that would've been somewhat obvious.
I'll admit that my knowledge was out of date and being wrong caused me to disparage him wrongly and rather strongly. But Rick Warren was associated with the game at one point and maybe I learned that if I disparage someone then I should check that things haven't changed.
No one can pay attention to everything and we can't Google everything we say every single time; that's why we have places like this.

Obama 2008? Please. (none / 0) (#13)
by MinorRipper on Mon Nov 27, 2006 at 09:52:29 AM EST

I gotta say, this business about Obama being a serious 2008 candidate is all a fantasy. Perhaps VP, but there is 0 chance he is our next pres. All this talk is for his book and for the media to sell newspapers (or get viewers)...