On one hand, the president presented a masterful work of political theater (a term used repeatedly by media pundits to describe the State of the Union address) made more dramatic by the power of the president’s delivery and the substance of his message. Yet behind the staged applause reflecting the obvious partisan divisions in Congress, the president succeeded in providing a vivid portrait of what historian Martin Marty in the 1970s called “prophetic civil religion.” Marty saw this incarnation of civil religion as an understanding that America carried a unique destiny among the family of nations. The nation, however, was also under divine judgment to realize that destiny by working toward a vision of collective justice for all Americans.

Understood as the interconnection of secular and religious language in public life, the rhetoric of civil religion in American history connects the political purpose (or, to use a theological term, “mission”) of a nation to a transcendent, divine meaning. This tradition of civil religion cuts two ways. One path has led to an uncritical belief in the infallibility of the United States as a political entity. Its laws, and the presuppositions of its laws, are seen as permanently set in stone, and America, as a nation under God, as beyond reproach because its mission is part of God’s divine providence. (This belief is reflected in the frequent argument that America was founded as a Christian nation.)

On one level, Obama’s address was low on religious rhetoric. Besides the usual “God bless America” coda that is part of every major political address, there was little overt reference to America’s religious heritage. Yet part of Obama’s genius as a politician is the way he embodies this larger tradition of prophetic civil religion. The civil religious tradition of Barack Obama connects the theme of American uniqueness to the idea that the nation stands under some form of providential judgment. This was part of the mastery of figures such as Abraham Lincoln, who was able to articulate the theme of America’s unique political destiny while also holding the nation accountable for the sins of slavery.

Not since John F. Kennedy has an American president tied together as skillfully as Obama the persistent theme that Americans, for all their political differences, share a common destiny as a nation, challenging people to work collectively to realize this vision. Part of the power of this tradition, when used effectively, is that it holds in tension a faith in a shared national destiny with the theme of a future hope, that is, the promise that with hard work and perseverance the future will be better than the present. As he has done so many times in the past, the president vividly made that connection for his audience last night.

The tradition of prophetic civil religion Obama embodies is not unique to American presidents, and one can point to a wide range of political and religious leaders in American history who have used elements of this heritage in their public rhetoric. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was perhaps the classic embodiment of a public theology that affirmed the greatness of America’s past, while also summoning Americans to transcend the parameters of racism to realize a vision of justice for all.

Consistent with figures like King, Obama’s civil religion requires deep thought and meditation on the sacrifices of the past and the way these sacrifices are connected to creating hope in the future. There is a note of realism in Obama’s language (that came through loud and clear in his State of the Union), whereby lasting change is never easy but requires personal sacrifice as a means to reconnect with the larger meaning of the nation’s collective destiny.

I am sure the president is aware, however, that great leaders are ultimately judged not simply by their rhetoric but whether they can achieve results. Part of Obama’s problem is not simply the fact that he no longer holds a “super majority” in the senate. It is that his vision of America’s past and future has run headlong into a strong current of populist ideology. I am not against populism per se, yet for all the benefits of this tradition in communicating with a grassroots base (as Obama himself acknowledges), there is a dangerous tendency of this movement historically to define itself by what it is against, as opposed to what it stands for. Recent iterations (the much publicized Tea Party movement, for example) are part of a long line of movements in American history that play to the idea of a pristine past under attack. For all the power of Obama’s stress on the collective “we,” populism is a movement that often garners its strength from the importance of the individual “I.” While many on the left may want to dismiss the irrationality of populist angst, it’s a movement that lifts up another idiom of American political rhetoric: the sacred ideal of personal liberty. (In a number of ways, this populist theme has long been present in many traditions of American evangelicalism, long before the so-called reemergence of the Christian right in the 1980s and 1990s).

In the year ahead, it remains to be seen whether Obama will be able not only to negotiate the Democrat-Republican division, but whether he can connect his vision of prophetic civil religion, with its stress on the collective nature of America, to the very real economic hardships of millions of Americans who find in populist rhetoric a language that resonates with their immediate sufferings. In the past, Obama has understood that building a political movement requires more than a compelling vision of a collective identity. It also needs to speak to the concrete and specific hopes, fears, and dreams of ordinary Americans. As he contemplates the second year of his presidency, Obama’s legislative goals, in part, will need to hold these two competing ideals in creative tension.

Christopher H. Evans is the academic dean and Sallie Knowles Crozer Professor of Church History at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York. He is also the author of Liberalism without Illusions: Renewing an American Christian Tradition (Baylor University Press, 2010).

It is clear that the president is struggling with this question. Since he came into office he has been frustrated and perhaps baffled by the difficulty he and many leaders experience in actually trying to govern when they obtain political power in a democracy. President Obama is mindful of the fact that the American people have an extremely low opinion of Washington, that they blame Washington not only for the current mess we are in but also for not being able to do anything about it. We hear the president’s long list of proposals on issues such as the economy, regulation of financial institutions, health care, and education, and we all know from bitter previous experience that most of his agenda simply will not happen.

The president acknowledged the many differences people have on these and other topics, and he was clearly troubled by the fact that political agreement is difficult to achieve. Yet in an almost desperate attempt to find a way forward, he made a strong appeal to our “shared values” and the fact that both sides of the political aisle simply have to work together. He rightfully spent most of his time on the economy, and he is aware that our economic worries tend to overshadow our ideological differences, for a time at least, and they can bring us together as we try to find a way out of the mess that was created largely by human greed. He made the same point about national security: when we are under attack the nation is united. But he is also aware, although he made no mention of it, that a common purpose does not mean agreement on a common solution, as the bitter arguments about how to deal with security matters testify. The same is unfortunately true for our economic problems, as partisan debates about taxes, health care reform, and the economic stimulus package show.

The problem of pluralism, unfortunately, leads to very nasty partisan politics. It might help us to remember, as anyone who has studied the history of American politics will know, that it has always been like this in terms of political infighting, partisan attacks, and political corruption, though we are now more ideologically split than we have ever been before.

The president was inconsistent in his speech, however, because while he was asking us all to work together and to try to put our political differences aside in the interests of solving our problems and emphasizing our shared values, he directed a very pointed attack at the Supreme Court from this most conspicuous of forums, accusing it of undoing a century of law on campaign finance reform. This draws attention to another feature of an ideologically divided nation—that the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be above politics, is in great danger of actually becoming just another political body. One supports them when they deliver a judgment that is in accord with one’s worldview and criticizes them when they deliver a judgment that is not, and the “independence” of the law goes out the window. In our present climate the Court has lost its independence on many of the hot-button topics of the day. All sides have now realized that influencing the make-up of the Court gives one a better chance of shaping American society and culture according to one’s beliefs and values than the slow, difficult, and costly process of trying to get legislation through Congress.

Whether we like it or not, America is at times a divided nation. But I was struck by the fact that underlying much of the president’s remarks was a powerful theme: that we are all human beings, and that we have many shared values on the important things in life like morality, education, and the common good. Our economic and security concerns make us see from time to time that many of our disagreements are petty, and, as the president rightfully said, we all have a responsibility to strive to make progress as a country.

President Obama referred to a number of these shared concerns: we want a job that pays the bills, that allows us to get ahead, and that will help us give our children a better life. He drew attention to the fact that we share a stubborn resilience and a fundamental decency, strength, generosity, and courage that will always see us through in the end.

Every now and again an extraordinary individual comes along and helps us concentrate on our shared values, rise above our differences, and move forward together to solve our difficult problems. President Obama carried great promise into office, but his star has faded a little in his first year. It remains to be seen whether he can overcome the problem of pluralism, where so many have failed, to lead us forward as a nation.

Brendan Sweetman is professor of philosophy at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, and the author of Why Politics Needs Religion: The Place of Religious Arguments in the Public Square (InterVarsity Press, 2006) and, most recently, Religion and Science: An Introduction (Continuum Books, 2010).

With skill he reminded hearers, ever so subtly, about the mess he inherited. He spoke of solutions, some already in place, others in process, still others being frustrated by Republican insistence “that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town.” Perhaps in an appeal to regain lost support among independent voters and, at the same time, connect with those on “Main Street,” Obama clearly named some villains accountable for many of the country’s problems: those responsible for the “bad behaviour on Wall Street,” the politicians who “obstruct every single bill just because they can,” the “outsized influence of lobbyists,” the “banks that helped cause this crisis,” and “insurance company abuses.” He outlined steps for reform in all these circles of influence.  He renewed his vows to end the war in Iraq, increase effectiveness in Afghanistan, and multiply sanctions in North Korea and Iran if they continue to pursue nuclear prowess. His speech hit most of the right notes on terrorism, thankfully without the civil and religious piety too often found in the rhetoric of President Bush.

But one aspect of his populist rhetoric really left me cold—gave me a chill, in fact. Though I don’t think my response has anything to do with my living in Canada these days, I’m confident my friends and colleagues here would conclude Obama’s words were just “more of the same” from the neighboring empire to the south. I must admit to being profoundly disappointed precisely because I still believe in the change he has promoted. While near the end of his speech he spoke of advancing “the common security and prosperity of all people” in order “to sustain a global recovery,” the heart of this address shouted “We’re Number One!

I applaud Obama’s concern for both “energy efficiency and clean energy,” but his argument that the “nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy“ and that “America must be that nation” places “greening” at the service of a greedy desire to retain (regain?) control of the world’s resources.  What has American leadership of the global economy done for the world? What had it accomplished in Haiti prior to this devastating earthquake, for example? Studies like the one done by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University indicate that the bottom 50 percent of the world’s adults own around one percent of global wealth, while the world’s richest one percent of adults owned approximately 40 percent of the world’s resources. Or, as economist Branko Milanovic of the World Bank put it in 2002, “The top 10 percent of the US population has an aggregate income equal to income of the poorest 43 percent of people in the world.” Yes, by all means, let’s keep that going.

It is doubly ironic that the core of the first State of the Union address from a black president would contain such a profoundly affirmative nod in the direction of good old US economic imperialism—doubly ironic because, first, the history of slavery and racism is definitely connected to such classic American economic hubris, and, second, he made this particular case so clearly dependent on the rhetoric of Martin Luther King. “How long should we wait?” Obama asked. “How long should America put its future on hold? … Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America….It’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth.”

Set over against Obama’s rhetorical lament, I prefer King’s use of it in 1965 in Montgomery: “How long will it take? … How long will justice be crucified?” As he put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Or perhaps Isaiah’s lament fits the irony better if the US continues on its path of economic domination: “For how long, O Lord? And [God] said: ‘Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate.’”

Mark G. Toulouse is principal and professor of the history of Christianity at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

The president spent the overwhelming majority of his address on the economy. He spoke to the heart of America, the heart of America’s concerns, and the heart of American resolve. He addressed us as middle-class Americans, people reeling from economic loss and instability, and heirs to a legacy of resiliency. As he spoke, I continued to hear the voices from the phone calls.

One young man called because I know his father, and his father told him I work with people coming home from prison and their families. He had been home less than 24 hours, found a place in a local shelter, and reached out for help. The other gentleman who called is a highway maintenance and construction worker who has not had steady work since 1997. A combination of battling addiction (he won, and has been sober now seven years, one day at a time) and insurance companies (who refuse to provide adequate assistance for the two on-the-job accidents which left him idled) has forced this once proud homeowner and union steward to a struggling subsistence lifestyle. Ironic how both calls came during an address that was not for them.

Second chances may be biblical, but they are not popular. The president said so last night, only he called them “bailouts.” When the second chances go to the poor, our common penchant to overlook the plight of the least of society exacerbates our dislike of the “root canal” of restoration. No, our primary economic interest is in the loss of the middle class, not the ongoing plight of those already marginalized by society.

There is hope. My two friends squeezed their way into the address when the president acknowledged that in the midst of the current economic crisis, “For those who had already known poverty, times got harder.” His call for investment in community colleges as well as “world-class education” could open doors for these two distressed voices whose letters will not be read in any presidential speech any time soon.

Those letters will continue to come from Elkhart, Indiana and Galesburg, Illinois. The stories told will continue to echo from Allentown, Pennsylvania and Elyria, Ohio, because the address was of the middle, by the middle and for the middle, and those who rule must seize the middle before they can seize the moment.

So the State of the Union address is really more about how a president, totally aware of our middlin’ identity, could communicate and connect, inspire and challenge a nation rightly perceiving the loss of the middle. The address reflects the ongoing rush to center of post-Reagan electoral politics. And the president is right: every day is Election Day.

In the address last night, the rush to center took a step forward—uh, wait a minute. When you are in the center, how can a step take you in any direction but left or right? Biblical religion does not deal in left, right, and center. It does not assess the horizontal plane. Rather, biblical religion assesses society in vertical terms: who’s up, who’s down, and who’s in between.

Much of society votes horizontal but thinks vertical. Our political process offers choices of left, right, and center, but our assessment of social reality often stands in the vertical middle between top and bottom, constantly looking up in aspiration to power and blaming down in eschewing policies that affect the least of these. The president is right: service, not ambition ought to be leadership’s aim. But ambition is the aim of the American middle, which can never settle for being anything less than number one. Why should leadership be any different?

The painful awareness that those on the margins, for whom Hebrew and Christian scriptures declare God’s special affinity, could only peek through the cracks of the address says something more about us than it does the president or the address itself. Just as my two friends interrupted my attempt to participate in a celebration of Middle America, they interrupt our efforts at stabilizing the middle by providing a persistent presence from below. They do not speak from right, center, or left. They speak from beneath. Biblical religion assesses the state of the union from the bottom up.

Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC.

President Barack Obama has faith in America. He both opened and closed his State of the Union address with remarks about his belief in the power of the American spirit, which he defined as our fundamental strength, optimism, generosity, and decency as a people and as a nation. He credited this spirit with pulling us through, among other things, the uncertainties of the Civil War, World War II, and the civil rights movement.

Many Americans share Obama’s faith in the American spirit, and thus they share in his American civil religion. Such a faith is in the tradition of the oldest political-religious narrative in American history. It is a variation on Puritan John Winthrop’s call for the settlers of colonial Massachusetts to be a “city on a hill” and a beacon to the world. Obama provided his most passionate articulation of this civil faith at the end of the speech, the only moment when the chamber fell completely silent, no doubt in homage to the “sacred” values of America. He noted that American leadership overseas “advances the common security and prosperity of all people,” and the United States takes such initiatives “because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores. But we also do it because it is right.”

Preaching this civil faith is a part of being president, and Obama is among the few presidents to preach it with a measure of humility. Like all good preachers, he implicated himself and his party in the sins that have led to the gridlock of Washington politics, prohibited the exercise of the American spirit, and reduced the federal government to a place “where every day is Election Day.” He also distinguished himself from some of his predecessors by explaining that the greatest realizations of the American spirit came as a consequence of making sacrifices in the face of enormous crisis.

This humility notwithstanding, President Obama’s civil faith in America clouded his judgment at a crucial point in the speech. He highlighted national security as the greatest source of unity in US history and lamented that the unity achieved after 9/11 “has dissipated.” It is one thing to suggest that war and armed conflict are permanent fixtures of history, as he did in his Nobel speech. It is an altogether different thing to champion the national cohesion that comes from it. That unity ushered in two wars, costing America trillions of dollars, thousands of precious American lives, and tens or even hundreds of thousands of precious non-American lives.

This curious advocacy of the unity found in national security would have dismayed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom Obama has cited routinely as a shaper of his political vision. Niebuhr was deeply suspicious of such simple unities, and he was certainly suspicious of simplistic faith in American ideals. Late in the speech, Obama expressed just such a faith: “Abroad, America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. The same is true at home.” Niebuhr understood American ideals to be not only our greatest strength, but also our greatest weakness. Pride alone in these ideals, thought Niebuhr, was extremely dangerous, since “a too-confident sense of justice,” as he wrote, “always produces injustice.”

Still, after a year as president of a nation in turmoil, President Obama’s first State of the Union address makes clear that his faith in the America spirit has not been shaken. Yet based on his frequent appeals in the speech to this spirit and to the better part of our political natures—and in light of the palpable sarcasm and sneering by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle as he spoke—it appears that he can be less sure about whether or not Americans will practice their civil faith with civility.

Andrew Finstuen teaches at Pacific Lutheran University. He is the author of Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)

One important thing that religion brings to politics is a certain kind of realism about human nature and human possibilities.

In private life, we all exaggerate our own virtues and expect too much from our own plans. Faith helps us to keep our pride in check, and we can depend on friends and family to do it if our faith falls short.

Photo: White House (Pete Souza)

Political leaders, whatever their personal piety may be, find this realism harder to achieve. Americans are idealists. Usually they are less realistic than their leaders and more likely to encourage overreaching than to restrain it. President Obama seems to have maintained a resolute realism during his first year in office. The question is whether he can communicate it to people who elected him for the audacity of hope.

Liberals are generally less realistic than conservatives in domestic politics. They put more stock in well-devised plans, and they are more confident of their ability to coalesce general dissatisfaction with the present situation into support for a specific policy. President Obama’s strategy for health care reform has thus been remarkable for its realistic self-restraint. He has been willing to let the plan take a form crafted by compromise, and he has the patience to see reform as the work of decades, rather than a single legislative session. A similar realism seems to guide his approach to the environment and energy. The victories have been limited, the compromises have been numerous, and those who hoped for greater justice in health care and a more sustainable environmental policy have been the most disappointed. But a realist knows there is no perfect plan and will settle for modest gains that open the way to further negotiations and future improvements.

The most impressive achievements of liberal realism have been in foreign policy. The Marshall Plan, Truman’s response to the Berlin blockade, and Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis established a pattern of forcefulness, restraint, and, above all, patience that kept the Cold War on a trajectory that left the United States the dominant global power without requiring the defeat of the enemy or igniting a nuclear holocaust. President Obama’s commitment to that legacy is apparent in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which summarized the key points of realistic world politics: In a world where we must assume the persistence of evil, peace and justice sometimes require the deployment of force. The leaders who make those decisions must be accountable not only to their own convictions, but to the historic standards of just war and the requirements of international law.

What President Obama also warned us is that we do not yet know what this legacy of successful realism means in a post-Cold War world where the greatest threat to security is international terrorism and humanitarian crises are sparked by regimes whose nationalist or religious aims know no realistic political limits. Must we question our own righteousness so much that we let genocide continue unchecked? Does restraint require us to respect the sovereignty of countries that become havens for terrorists? The realistic balance between strategic interests and international law and the fine line that separates forceful diplomacy from the diplomatic use of force have not yet been established for these new realities.

What we can expect, if our leaders continue to be realistic, is an extended period of testing, a time in which we will have to deal with the aftermath of our mistakes as well as engage in a rigorous evaluation of apparent successes. A troop surge may be a realistic answer to insurgency that builds support for a friendly government in Kabul. Or it may not be. Either way, we will have to deal with the outcomes of today’s policy while figuring out a realistic response to the unprecedented situations that will follow when we leave Iraq and Afghanistan. Over time, if we are both skillful and lucky, this will evolve into a new kind of realism that will enable us to maintain our interests with integrity until the war on terrorism changes into some other kind of threat, just as the Cold War did. We may want a more decisive victory or a more definitive justice, but a wise leader will not expect more than that, nor promise it.

The question, then, is whether President Obama’s realistic leadership can survive the impatient American idealism that brought him into office. So far, his realist credentials seem secure, in both domestic and foreign policy. But if the people are not as patient and self-critical as he is, they will start to hope for someone who will lead them into the future with more certainty and less consultation. A religious realism about political life suggests that is one hope we should be audacious enough to resist.

Robin W. Lovin is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University.