Obama's Christian Pitch: Yes, Jon, I Get It...

Dr. Schaff at South Dakota Politics offers a clever post on Obama's blatant marketing to Christian voters in his Kentucky literature. Given my own complaints about the conflation of piety and patriotism, I can only say, Touché.

Well, actually, I can say a little more. If I were running for office and I could Google "Heidelberger is a Muslim" and get 130,000 links, and if that misperception (fueled in part by my main opponent) were dragging down my poll numbers, I might feel the need to set the record straight as well and do so in a way that says what my actual worldview motivates me to do

And were I running for office and 85% of my voters claimed Christianity as their motivating worldview, I'd probably say something just like what Obama said, something in their language that reminds them that their faith is as much about work as Word.

Of course, were I running for office, as a good secular humanist, I'd have to cite my old friends Jim Casy and Tom Joad:

"Ever' place we stopped I seen it. Folks hungry for side-meat, an' when they get it, they ain't fed. An' when they'd get so hungry they couldn' stan' it no more, why, they'd ast me to pray for 'em, an' sometimes I done it." He clasped his hands around drawn-up knees and pulled his legs in. "I use ta think that'd cut 'er," he said. "Use ta rip off a prayer an' all the troubles'd stick to that prayer like flies on wallpaper, an' the prayer'd go a-sailin' off, a-takin' them troubles along. But it don' work no more."

Tom said, "Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork."

"Yeah," Casy said. "An' Almighty God never raised no wages."

[John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939, Chapter 20]

I do indeed wish that a fair portion of the electorate did not expect presidential candidates to pass some sort of religious muster. But if we must have that conversation, I can only hope Obama's contribution to that conversation will expand the discussion beyond the Focus on the Family distractions of gays and abortion and turn the discussion to a Christianity of community, not exclusion.