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March 2008 Archives

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton looks at the still-swirling furor around Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and describes political controversies that have also surrounded Hillary Clinton's former pastor, Rev. Philip Wogaman.

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Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton describes some high-profile Catholic endorsements this week for Barack Obama and discusses the challenges that face both the Democrats and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in reaching out to Catholic voters.

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Rev. Otis Moss III is succeeding retired -- and controversial -- senior pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Sen. Barack Obama's home church in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ. In a February 2008 interview, Moss discussed the various ways race and religion have mixed in political campaigns.

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Senator Barack Obama this week gave what many are calling the most important speech on race in America since the days of Martin Luther King, Jr. Obama made the speech after weeks of controversy surrounding remarks made over the years by his longtime pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly Managing Editor Kim Lawton reports on the speech, reaction to it, and the discussion it has generated about prophetic preaching.

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I thought it was a remarkable speech, for all the reasons many others have given: courage to face a difficult topic without fluff, wisdom to see sources of anger and frustration both black and white, return to his basic theme of unity needed to deal with our collective responsibilities, all the rest.

Two comments, one personal and one historical: When I was a young man our pastor was a tough Irishman who preached regularly about the Communist danger and personally taught our confirmation class with that as the center of Catholic missionary responsibility. I was deeply interested, as the "Reds" had made life miserable for the beloved former parishioners of my uncle Joe, a Maryknoller who had served in North Korea before imprisonment by the Japanese. His friends, old China hands, would visit our house with tales of Communist atrocities in China. The pastor gave us a clear sense that the Communist conspiracy and its sympathizers could be found in their local newspaper, the YMCA, and especially at nearby William College. I can assure you that his language on the subject was extremely violent and deeply divisive, casting suspicion on many neighbors, on the government of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, on the State Department. But we all loved the guy.

Another story: When I was a graduate student I heard a distinguished historian deliver a paper on the pastor who served a wealthy Protestant and Republican congregation in Evanston, Illinois from the 1930s to the 1950s. The pastor was a pacifist and Christian socialist much beloved by his people, who most likely regarded his views of war and politics as dangerously radical. Why did they tolerate the man and his often prophetic sermons? After asking surviving members of the congregation and consulting the records the answer was clear: because he was a great pastor, present to his people in times of joy and suffering, preaching always on the Gospel and shared experiences of life, inviting consideration of the Gospel challenges, never demanding their compliance with a blueprint for public or private life. One suspects that Rev. Wright was such a pastor.

I am reminded of a group of Catholic parishioners who visited a young priest from their parish jailed for a protest at the Pentagon. "He may be a crazy priest," one of them said, "but he's our crazy priest."

--David O'Brien is a historian of American Catholicism and professor of Roman Catholic studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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It is rather poignant that during Holy Week, as Christians ponder the journey of Christ to the cross of reconciliation and hope, Senator Barack Obama, a lay person from within the church, calls on the United States to embrace the ethic of reconciliation. In a profound sense the hope of the church is in its laity, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his pastor, whom Senator Obama instructs to go beyond the anger evidenced in his preaching and teaching, should be proud to have nurtured a member of his flock committed to reconciliation between black and white communities.

Not since Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech 45 years ago have we heard anyone speak with such power and pathos to a nation in search of its soul. What was especially illuminating for me was Senator Obama calling on his church and nation to do two things at once: to affirm race and to transcend race. This is the challenge the senator placed before nation and church (synagogue, temple, mosque), as people reach beyond borders of race, religion, and class in an attempt to learn to be human together. On the one hand, we are called to affirm who we are and acknowledge the contradictions inherent in our language, style of worship, and ethos. On the other hand, we are instructed to reach beyond race, religion, and ethnicity and join in a common embrace.

Pastor Wright seems to suggest that the black community is not ready for this embrace. He seems to suggest that what we have is an emergency situation in which the black community is called to affirm race and thereby acquire power as a first step toward dialogue and community.

Both church and nation would benefit from a dialogue between the Rev. Wright and Senator Obama.

Noel Leo Erskine is associate professor of theology and ethics at Emory University and the author of KING AMONG THE THEOLOGIANS (Pilgrim Press).

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Listen to excerpts from Senator Barack Obama's March 18 speech on race and religion.

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Cheryl Sanders, professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity, discusses the theological underpinnings of Senator Barack Obama's vision of race in America, describes how Obama's controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright has influenced that vision, and defends Wright's "prophetic" ministry.

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Senator Barack Obama's March 18 address was the most moving call for racial reconciliation and justice since the days of Martin Luther King Jr. I personally was profoundly moved by it.  He gave full and proper weight to the dark evil of slavery and racism with which this country has never fully come to terms, the progress our nation has made since the 1950s and 1960s, and remaining issues that need to be addressed. He spoke to crucial issues that too often persons in public life feel are too sensitive to be discussed publicly. I appreciated his acknowledgment of the anger that is still present in the African-American community over past and continuing failures of our nation to live up to its professed beliefs. He clearly separated himself from the assertions of his now former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that have been widely replayed.

And yet...And yet...Even given the understandable anger among many African Americans, and especially those who grew up in the pre-civil rights days when discrimination was more blatant and the opportunities more limited than they are today, I still came away troubled. I have struggled to identify the source of those troubled feelings, even in the face of Obama's deeply moving and heartfelt call for racial understanding and reconciliation. I think the problem is the depth of hatred evidenced by Rev. Wright in some of the statements, and that by a minister of the gospel--in particular, the sermon in which Rev. Wright said we should not ask God to bless America, but to damn America. As an evangelical Christian who believes in the reality of both God's blessings and his damnation, to call upon God to damn any person or nation is a fearsome thing to do. This was more than a colorful, powerful, and angry way of saying our nation has been and still is infected by the sin of racism.

But I also must recognize these were the words not of Sen. Obama, but of someone else. On balance, I personally believe that years ago Senator Obama ought to have separated himself from this church or in some other way registered objections to the angry, hateful comments of his pastor now under scrutiny. But I am not Senator Obama, and I have made enough decisions in my own life I now see as less than wise that I hardly feel qualified to condemn the senator for what from my perspective was an unwise course of action (or, more accurately, a lack of action). I do not see the mere fact of his membership in Rev. Wright's church as a sufficient basis to doubt the genuineness of his commitment to racial reconciliation and justice. Between now and when the Democratic nomination is decided, or if things go Obama's way, next November, there will be ample opportunity to test and try to see if this indeed is the case.

--Steve Monsma is a senior research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College and professor emeritus of political science at Pepperdine University. His most recent book is HEALING FOR A BROKEN WORLD: CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC POLICY (Crossway Books).

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It's been forty years since we have heard redemptive language in the political arena.  The last person to tell the truth in these terms was Martin Luther King, Jr. Like King, Obama did not flinch from addressing the lingering pain and anger of racism in America. He didn't merely recite a list of black grievances, but he gave expression to white frustrations and fears as well. Like King, Obama understands how questions of race are bound up with religion and religious identity. It's no accident that the current controversy arose in a congregation. Historically, the only institution in which blacks could express their rage--and their hope--has been within the confines of the sermon and the exuberant worship of the black church. There is no wall of separation between religion and politics in the black church or, outside the courts, anywhere else in American life.

Like King, Obama has an expansive and generous view of religion. God really is no respecter of skin color. The great themes of love, justice, and hope apply to all, not to a chosen few. Obama's message is disarmingly simple and historically vexing: Our God-given unity as a people is greater than the prejudices and fears that divide us.

--Richard Lischer is the James T. and Alice Mead Cleland Professor of Preaching at Duke Divinity School and the author of THE PREACHER KING: MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AND THE WORD THAT MOVED AMERICA (Oxford University Press). 
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There is no older tactic in American politics than identifying opponents with their least reputable friends and allies. Jeffersonian Republicans portrayed the Federalists as tools of British monarchists, if not monarchists themselves, while Federalists described Jeffersonians as the American equivalent of bloodthirsty French revolutionaries. Abraham Lincoln repeatedly protested that he was not an abolitionist like John Brown. According to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, supporters of the America First Committee who opposed aid to Great Britain at the risk of war in 1941 were Nazi agents or dupes. Meanwhile, conservatives accused FDR of collaborating with Communists. In his less lucid moments, President Lyndon Johnson believed that grassroots opposition to the Vietnam War was fomented by international Communism. Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale claimed in 1984 that Ronald Reagan would allow Rev. Jerry Falwell to pick the justices of the Supreme Court.

Moreover, all mass movements--and presidential campaigns are mass movements among other things--inevitably contain some weird, crooked, crazy, and vicious people. The America First Committee's supporters included not only many thoughtful foes of FDR's imperial presidency (including young Gerald Ford and John F. Kennedy), but also the group's most famous spokesman, Charles Lindbergh, an anti-Semite and racist. The Communist party of the 1930s and 1940s, which intermittently backed Roosevelt, contained some spies and many character assassins as well as admirable champions of civil rights and organized labor. And long before the invention of the twenty-four hour news cycle, journalists and commentators loved to emphasize the weird, crooked, crazy, and vicious.

Given these long-standing patterns, a speech by Barack Obama dealing with some supporter deemed disreputable by many Americans was all but inevitable. Nonetheless, both the circumstances that required Senator Obama to speak now and the contents of his speech are noteworthy.

As conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity has complained, even though Senator Obama's friendship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been no secret, the mainstream media have paid slight attention to Wright's opinions. In the past week, however, this story has been mainstreamed in a way that suggests something more than the routine journalistic quest for the lurid.  Rather, newspapers and networks are focusing on Rev. Wright's most volatile remarks for self-protection in the wake of charges that their coverage has been soft on Obama. In the process, the media are framing a fairly common human reality--association with a person whose views are condemned as radical or "politically incorrect" and whose expressions are often over the top--as Something Unusual.  

One of the most sensible comments came from Senator John McCain. Pressed several times by Sean Hannity to attack Obama for his association with Rev. Wright, McCain did not take the bait. Perhaps thinking of his own endorsement by Rev. John Hagee, a classic fundamentalist critic of the Roman Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon, McCain responded with a sigh that a presidential candidate does not agree with every opinion expressed by everyone who likes him and/or whom he likes.

Come to think of it, even though I'm not a candidate for anything, neither do I. And probably, gentle reader, neither do you (unless, of course, you are a self-righteous zealot which, in turn, makes you at least slightly disreputable in the eyes of most Americans). And it has been amply documented that men and women frequently attend churches, synagogues, and mosques even though they disagree with--or barely notice--the core doctrines of the clergy. They like the tradition or the ambiance or the community or the social services. This Easter Sunday, millions of Catholics who use birth control and favor legal abortion will attend services led by priests, bishops, and cardinals who disagree vehemently and may even address these issues. Millions of conservative Protestants will listen to sermons by classic fundamentalists like Rev. Hagee without viewing their Catholic neighbors as agents of the Antichrist. Except for a tiny minority of our fellow citizens who are closely scrutinized public figures, this human capacity to live with inconsistent thoughts and feelings, not to mention with unconventional friends, will not be publicized as Something Unusual and disreputable.

Public figures typically offer two responses to the charge of guilt by association with disreputable friends and allies. The first is a vigorous disassociation from the opinions and, usually, from the person who uttered them. The second is to countercharge that the other side's disreputable friends and allies are just as bad and probably worse.

Senator Obama employed both of these tactics not only with skill but also with unusual thoughtfulness. He separated himself from Rev. Wright's "incendiary language" and mistaken beliefs, generally described. He prudently chose not to address point by point Wright's assertions about specific issues which, as he noted, are now available in "snippets" in an "endless loop" on television and YouTube. Unbound by presidential aspirations, the rest of us can notice that Wright's range of opinions included sensible advice as well as wacky assertions. We do not have to agree with the wacky assertions--for instance, that whites deliberately disseminate AIDS among African Americans or that the United States deliberately provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--to consider Wright's grossly expressed point that the al Qaeda attack on 9/11 was connected in complicated ways to United States Mideast policy (much as the raid on Pearl Harbor was connected in complicated ways to United States Asian policy two generations ago). Our foreign policy would benefit if this question were not taboo (as Ron Paul discovered amid a chorus of boos during a Republican presidential debate).  

Instead of trying to navigate his way through opinions that ranged from sensible to absurd, Obama stressed the normality of working with and loving a minister whose views he sometimes found objectionable. Simply put, Wright had helped to strengthen Obama's personal faith, and Wright's ministry at Trinity United Church of Christ had served the community well.

Then, in ways unusual under these circumstances, Obama went beyond self-defense to teach some complex lessons consistent with the general themes of his campaign. Wright's expressions of anger at whites, though hardly the sum of his worldview, reflected the attitudes of his congregation. The pastor contained within himself, Obama said, the "contradictions--the good and the bad--of the community that he has served diligently for so many years." Trinity accepted the "black community in its entirety--the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger." Indeed, in the broadest sense, the congregation contained "in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America." African Americans needed to acknowledge this complexity, "embracing the burden of our past without becoming victims of our past." Nor should whites ignore the complexity. The "anger is real," Obama said, and it is also legitimate.

Even legitimate anger must not be exploited by demagogues, Obama warned. Furthermore, the bitterness could be diminished. In some ways, Wright's anger represented the honorable but outdated gut feeling of "his generation" that had come of age during the last days of the segregation era.       

While distancing himself from Rev. Wright's "divisive" views, Obama did two things that are rare in politics. He openly criticized aspects of his own core constituency. Then he respected the rest of the electorate enough to try to explain that constituency's furies and fears. He offered no African-American equivalent of the blarney that was used (with good political effect) to make Irish-Catholic John Kennedy less threatening to Protestants in 1960.

Obama's discussion of what is typically called the "white backlash" is even more remarkable. Adapting the standard tactic, he countercharged that conservatives had dishonorably manipulated white racial fears for "at least a generation." He stated but did not belabor the obvious. "Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism."

At the same time, Obama neither guilt-tripped working class and lower middle class whites who joined the Reagan coalition nor denigrated their feelings as a "paranoid style." Their anger is "similar" to that of many African Americans.  Here, too, understanding and empathy are necessary when whites complain, even in heated rhetoric, about urban crime, affirmative action, and mandatory school busing to achieve integration. Obama admitted that his white maternal grandmother, "who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world," expressed fear of black men she passed on the street and "on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Not only is Obama's candor remarkable--how many presidential candidates have admitted to imperfect grandmothers?--but so too is his matter-of-fact acceptance of human flaws and frailties. He does not require Americans to deny their less-than-admirable gut feelings and profess love for one another. Appeals of that sort, Obama seems to sense, are utopian, despite their sentimental charm. Rather, he urges Americans to "come together" in practical solidarity to work on common problems.  

Obama has said frequently that the "audacity of hope" does not imply mindless optimism. In his March 18 speech, he recalled the Civil War and subsequent struggle to move the United States toward racial equality. Elsewhere he has celebrated labor's battles against Pinkerton strike breakers. Obama may underestimate how hard it will be to define common goals for 300 million Americans, not to mention the amount of conflict still needed to achieve significant social and economic change. But he is not naive. Rather, as a few commentators have noted, Obama is a kind of Niebuhrian. In its tough analysis of human relations, his speech is a thoughtful contribution to Christian realism as well as an able political defense.

Leo P. Ribuffo is Society of the Cincinnati George Washington Distinguished Professor of History at George Washington University.


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I have said elsewhere that Barack Obama is the Muhammad Ali of presidential politics. You remember when traditional fighters stood in the middle of the ring and tried to hit Ali they rarely could because, as he put it, he floated like a butterfly. Ali said he was too pretty to be hit, that your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

That captures Barack Obama, who, so far, has floated like Ali above the fray of traditional politics. We don't know where he stands, which has been part of his appeal. Amazingly, Obama himself wrote in THE AUDACITY OF HOPE that he serves "as a blank screen on which people of vastly different stripes project their own views."  

Race has been one of those issues over which he has sought to float. He has presented himself as a new kind of candidate, one who is neither black nor white, one who, some have inferred, is post-racial. But as Shelby Steele points out in his book A BOUND MAN, Obama's approach to race is not really new. Steele argues that African Americans have often chosen to wear one of two masks in dealing with white society: that of the bargainer or the challenger. Challengers, such as Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, challenge whites to prove they are not racist, usually by giving something such as affirmative action or racial quotas. Obama has been a bargainer, like Oprah or an early Bill Cosby, saying to white society: I will think the best of you. I will treat you as though you are not racist, and you can accept me and not feel threatened.

The recent revelation that someone so close to Obama--his long-time minister and mentor--is a strong racial challenger, not only to whites but to America itself, threatens to undermine Obama's bargaining and floating about race. People rightly wonder, when they hear his pastor (or before that his wife, Michelle) challenging America and white society, where he really stands. How can he really be non-racial, or post-racial, when his wife and his 20-year pastor make such strong challenging statements?  

Obama's speech on the subject was both rhetorically eloquent and substantively unsatisfying. He said that his pastor's statements presented a distorted view of America and were divisive. But, as with so much of Obama's rhetoric, those statements are really about the process of dealing with race, not Obama's own positions about it (which we still don't know). He acknowledges that white people are sometimes angry about affirmative action, but never says what he would do about government policies of affirmative action. He points out that many African Americans are still angry about slavery and racism, but stops short of telling us what policies about racism he would pursue as president.  

Obama describes Reverend Wright as "imperfect." That's a wonderful psychological term, and we all sympathize with human imperfections. But people rightly wonder why he would continue in that church all these years. (I recently, painfully, left my church of 20 years over strong differences about its leadership.) And, more than that, they are left to wonder what Obama's policies and actions might be, since his beautiful rhetoric deals in psychology and sociology, not in policies and positions.  

All of this goes to the heart of Obama's campaign strategy. By staying above the fray, Obama hopes to appeal to the many Americans who are frustrated by partisan politics. But, in the end, he offers the even more frustrating alternative of voting for a candidate whose actual policies and positions remain unknown. In a Democratic primary, where the candidates' positions aren't all that different, this strategy has largely worked. His pastor's comments have, really for the first time, poked a hole in that lofty campaign-by-rhetoric. Perhaps voters will begin now to demand more of him. And it may also be that a strong Republican challenger in the fall may finally force him to stand and fight on policies and positions, not just float on the wings of psychology, sociology, and rhetoric.

--David Davenport is Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.  



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It was easily the most significant public statement on race by a major politician and, at the same time, the most significant addition to the canon on civil religion in America in forty years.

Some things were predictable, most obviously the generic religious inclusivism--the demand to follow the Golden Rule, which "all the world's great religions demand" (which raises the question whether there are any mediocre religions, and if so what do they demand? I don't know. Would that be the Aztecs?). But much of this speech was really quite new. In several important ways it did not reinforce the received categories of civil religion, but transcended and transfigured them.

I had suspected that for Obama to engage these issues, he would have to engage them on multiple registers--political, theological, personal. He did it all, and he did it in a way that caused all three to interrelate in powerful and mutually reinforcing ways.

The rhetoric he used was obviously deeply theological. By naming the "original sin" of America as chattel slavery, he anchored the historical and political situation at a level of profundity that most people, white and black, feel is the only appropriate one for this crime. As for playing up the connections between union and perfection in the Constitution's expressed desire to form a "more perfect union," he did not shy away from the extremely ambitious--dare I say audacious?--and extremely demanding language of moral perfection. But he also acknowledged that this perfection is not available to us as what Reinhold Niebuhr would call "a simple possibility."

The speech ended with a beginning, not an ending--with a call to renewed effort, not a lullaby to put the nation to sleep. America is a messianic nation, a nation with profound eschatological pretensions, at least from time to time. But Obama was not indulging in self-congratulation. Rather, he urged the nation to take with ever greater seriousness the moral and, indeed, religious obligations that those pretensions put upon all citizens.

He presented his personal role in this in deeply human, non-messianic ways. Against the many emotions that swirl around his candidacy and the complicated investment that many people, black and white, have in his campaign, he did not present himself as the solution to the problem, but the site where the problem can be felt most profoundly. It was, to speak in a theological register again, a deeply confessional account: "These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love." Of course, he can do this because of who he is, as half black and half white, with white and black family who love him but mistrust the other race in which he shares. He literally embodies the change he seeks to enact. He did not suggest that this was a solution, but rather the site where work needs to be done. Thus, a deeply personal moment became more than just a personal message. This time it came with some demands on the nation as a whole that leave the nation with a task.

I don't think the theological language was simply frosting on a wholly secular cake. Rather, theology was put to work, naming our condition and illuminating a way forward. Most interesting on this point was Obama's diagnosis of the nation's "racial stalemate" as a matter of escapism or avoidance--a problem, he suggested, rooted in our collective failure to engage one another, a failure both political and theological, a failure to be a people and to have hope. His criticism of Jeremiah Wright, among others, was a criticism of Wright's partial and despairing vision, his insistence that America is "static," that the proper response to our situation is to reinforce the patterns and expectations we have, rather than step out of them and do a new thing. Furthermore, by framing the choice as one between two stark options, Obama echoed deep biblical patterns. Most obviously, he echoed Deuteronomy: "I have set before you life and death...choose life." But more than that, he drew from the language of the Hebrew prophets the idea that God is doing a "new thing," that God is not just a marble edifice but a living God who demands something of the people now and in the future. The theological language was not being used to compliment America, but to obligate it.

This use of "new thing," it seems to me, is a genuine innovation in the rhetoric of "America as religious mission." Or if it is not entirely an innovation--after all, the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States does say Novus Ordo Seclorum, "A New Order of the Ages"--it was nonetheless never used in this way (at least not by anyone else from outside Illinois). This enabled Obama to express a faith in God and a faith "in the American people" in such a way that it wasn't idolatrous, but simply an expression of hope. And, most importantly, he called upon America to begin--to start to do something. This is a use of civil religion not rooted in apocalyptic endings, or titanic final battles between good and evil, but a struggle inside the nation, and inside each soul, between hope and fear.

Is he right? Is America ready for this? I suppose we won't know unless we try. Obama's prophetic stance--to use yet again a vastly overused metaphor, but one that fits this moment better than any since Martin Luther King Jr.--has some evidence behind it. After all, this is a man who burst onto the national scene not even four years ago, as a candidate in his first race for federal office, and he is now the leading candidate for Democratic nominee for president. It would be hard to dismiss that empirical evidence. But I think it is a harder fight than we might think, in the afterglow of hearing that remarkable speech.

--Charles T. Mathewes is an associate professor of religious ethics and the history of Christian thought at the University of Virginia and the author of A THEOLOGY OF PUBLIC LIFE (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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Far away from home, lecturing outside Calgary, I did not hear Barack Obama's speech on March 18. In reading the transcript, however, I am both impressed and moved. It may be one of the most important speeches ever offered by an American politician about race.

It seems that what triggered the speech was yet another round of political "gotcha." Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was in trouble for certain comments in his sermons and speeches. Obama was therefore guilty by association. Each day brought new inflammation. Let's go to the videotape!

This is what happens when you have presidential campaigns that last two years, and when you have essentially no important political news for six weeks on the Democratic side. Something (or someone) must be offered to the always hungry media maw. This week it has been Jeremiah Wright. Who will it be next week?

Undoubtedly, Obama has been wounded by the fracas surrounding his (now) former pastor. He has been wounded personally, and probably has been wounded politically in that blood sport we call a presidential campaign.

Today he decided to use this crisis as an opportunity to teach. It was a bracing lesson. It tests whether Americans have the capacity to deal with a nuanced presentation of both our history and our current realities.

Obama celebrated the principles that motivated the Founders while honestly decrying the horrible compromise with those principles represented by slavery. He talked about the legacy of systemic racism in this country and how that has been experienced within different generations of the black community. He talked about the meaning, and some of the problems, of the black church. He offered empathetic reflections on the struggles of economically desperate white Americans as well. Deep within the speech was a kind of seamless garment sense of human connectivity and a golden rule ethic of neighbor-love.

In an ironic way I am angry at Barack Obama. I am angry because to read this kind of articulate, honest, and profound speech from a politician actually gives me hope that our staggering and, yes, I believe, declining nation might actually find the kind of leadership it needs to do better. Is it better to have hoped and lost than never to have hoped at all?

--David P. Gushee is is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. His most recent book is THE FUTURE OF FAITH IN AMERICAN POLITICS: THE PUBLIC WITNESS OF THE EVANGELICAL CENTER (Baylor University Press).

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At a recent debate about the religious right, Rev. Harry Jackson, an evangelical megachurch pastor in Maryland, said he doesn't agree with much of what Barack Obama's pastor has said, but he defends Rev. Jeremiah Wright's right "to talk about the issues of the day."

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At a debate about the future of the religious right, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said Latino evangelicals are as interested in foreign policy issues as domestic issues, and they don't want to be owned by the Christian right or one political party.

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In the 2004 election, Democrats were sharply criticized for how they mishandled religion. This year, things have shifted dramatically. Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discusses specific ways Democratic officials are planning to incorporate religion into their National Convention in August, and she describes how different this is from her experience covering the convention four years ago.

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Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton continues a conversation with John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, about religious voters and the primary campaigns so far. They discuss the ways Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton are competing for faith-based votes, the religion challenges facing the Republican Party, and how religion will still be a factor in the weeks ahead.

Also read or watch Analysis of Religion in Texas and Ohio Primaries.

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Click here to see Texas and Ohio tracking poll data.
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On February 29, Senator Barack Obama addressed a group of more than 200 Hispanic evangelical pastors in Brownsville, Texas. He spoke about faith, immigration policy, and overcoming what he called the "brown-black" divide in America. (Video courtesy of the University of Texas at Brownsville.)

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