Faith and Works

Barack Obama makes a play for a Christian Democratic synthesis, appearing at a United Church of Christ event, telling "the crowd it was a UCC member who had inspired the Boston Tea Party which helped bring about the country's independence, and Obama said through the succeeding decades people of faith have helped make America more decent and more just." He elaborated that "My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the lord’s work."

Obama identified the war in Iraq, poverty and the plight of uninsured Americans as the primary "moral" issues facing the U.S.

Obama attacked leaders of the "Christian Right" who he accused of exploiting issues like abortion and gay marriage to divide Evangelical Christians from those who attend so-called "mainline" churches. "Of course, it goes a little further than that. There was a period of time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich...I don't know what Bible they are reading," Obama said, as the crowd applauded. "Didn't jive with my version."

This comes via Andrew Sullivan who sees Obama as deploying the "Christianist" approach he's come to deplore in the GOP to big government ends. That's probably not false. One big question is whether it will play with a nationwide electorate. Judis & Teixeira write that "Obama, a black man from Chicago, will also likely be seen as a cultural liberal; in addition, he could be at a disadvantage among many white voters in the South, lower Midwest, and interior West because of his race."

This strikes me as a question worthy of further research. African-Americans tend to be much more adept than white liberals at the brand of heavily religioned-up politics (or politicsed-up religion) that a certain segment of the electorate seems to enjoy and are also better at getting a pass from white seculars about doing it than are devout white people. It also seems to me that one shouldn't underestimate the extent to which Americans appear to me to be perfectly willing to embrace black men who fit a certain "non-threatening black man" mode. Certainly while early general election polling has very limited probative value, if there's anything at all that people know about Obama it's that he's black, and he still polls well. And, yes, the "Wilder effect" doesn't seem to exist any more if it ever did.