By Marni Goldberg
Washington Bureau
Published June 28, 2006, 9:43 PM CDT
WASHINGTON -- Sharing the experience of his own quest for faith before an enthusiastic crowd, Sen. Barack Obama spoke Wednesday of progressives' failure to handle religious issues and insisted it is time Democrats find a cure for their spiritual ills.
The Illinois Democrat offered his political and religious observations to a coalition of Christians gathered at the Call to Renewal conference on poverty in America.
On the event's final day, Obama was honored for his work on behalf of society's less fortunate. He said it was his work as a community organizer for Christian churches that acquainted him with his own beliefs and values.
"I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death," Obama said. "It is an active, palpable agent in the world. It is a source of hope."
Democrats and liberals have struggled in recent years with how to approach what has been termed the religious gap between them and more openly religious communities that often have aligned with conservative Republican candidates.
"At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that?-regardless of our personal beliefs?-constitutional principles tie our hands," the first-term senator said.
"At worst, some liberals dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word 'Christian' describes one's political opponents, not people of faith," he continued.
His own religious convictions aside, Obama said that, as a Democrat, he has fallen into the same trap as many in his party who have come before him, remaining quiet about the role faith has played in his life for fear of engaging in the conversation on religious values.
Obama said that while America's religious gap has been manipulated by the likes of such evangelical conservative leaders as Rev. Jerry Falwell and broadcaster Pat Robertson, Democrats have remained on the sidelines. And that, he said, has to end.
"Over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people, and join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy," Obama said.
Obama is not the first leading Democrat to recognize the need for progressives to handle religious issues more openly. Other Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and party chairman Howard Dean, have made similar assertions, and both were participants at the Call to Renewal conference this week.
"I think what we heard today was a significant address in American politics and a speech that will be cited after today," said Rev. Jim Wallis, the president and chief executive of Call to Renewal, a liberal faith-based group. "It was a very sophisticated, substantial discussion that we haven't seen from a politician, and frankly a Democrat, in a long time."
Values and culture play a role in some of society's most urgent social problems, Obama said. "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square." By opening their minds to the possibility of a faith- and values-based discourse, he said, secularists might find they share values with religious people.
"And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal," Obama said.
"No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool to attack and belittle and divide," he said.
But even as he urged Democrats to soften their stance on religious issues in politics, the senator cautioned against "inauthentic expressions of faith ?-the politician who shows up at a black church around election time and claps, off rhythm, to the gospel choir."
That isn't clever enough by half to convince anyone but the choir. You know what would be? A Plan.