{"id":7829,"date":"2006-07-02T09:12:33","date_gmt":"2006-07-02T13:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7829.html"},"modified":"2006-07-02T09:12:33","modified_gmt":"2006-07-02T13:12:33","slug":"sunday-discussion-group-56","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sunday-discussion-group-56\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Discussion Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a fruitful discussion<\/a> the other day about Sen. Barack Obama’s speech<\/a> to “Call to Renewal,” but considering that some, including the WaPo’s E. J. Dionne Jr.<\/a>, believe Obama’s remarks “may be the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy’s Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican,” it’s probably worth taking another moment to consider what the senator had to say — and question whether or not his broader points have merit.<\/p>\n

The AP account<\/a> of Obama’s remarks was, upon further reflection, not entirely helpful. It took a few sentences from a 4,600-word speech<\/a> to suggest that Obama railed against the Democratic Party and liberals everywhere for anti-religion animus.<\/p>\n

I’ve read and re-read the speech several times, and while I believe Obama erred in repeating a few too many conservative narratives\/myths, it hardly seems reasonable to characterize his remarks as an “attack” on progressives. It was, in many ways, a liberal speech — he defended the separation of church and state, he said a pro-choice policy on reproductive rights is a practical necessity in a pluralistic democracy, and he said a Democratic message that emphasizes lifting up the least fortune is entirely consistent with evangelical Christian values.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Obama’s most candid denunciations were directed at conservatives — for trying to base public policy on Scripture, for using faith as a political wedge, for misguided adherence to biblical literalism, and for the movement’s cynical exploitation of people of faith. The AP report overlooked these points altogether.<\/p>\n

That said, most of the criticism I’ve seen — from Chris Bowers<\/a> and Michelle Goldberg<\/a>, in particular — takes Obama to task, fairly, for repeating “Republican propaganda as fact” and suggesting matter-of-factly that Dems have a religion problem.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, here are some points to ponder:<\/p>\n

* Does<\/em> the left have a religion problem?<\/p>\n

* If so, what should progressives do about it, if anything?<\/p>\n

* Should Dems reach out to evangelicals? Or is outreach a waste of time?<\/p>\n

* Can progressive secularists and progressive theists work cooperatively under a Democratic “big tent”?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a fruitful discussion the other day about Sen. Barack Obama’s speech to “Call to Renewal,” but considering that some, including the WaPo’s E. J. Dionne Jr., believe Obama’s remarks “may be the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy’s Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}