KIM LAWTON, correspondent: John Green is director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. He says with the Democratic Congress and the new Obama administration, religious conservatives have been adjusting to their new lack of access to the political power structure.

JOHN GREEN (Director Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, University of Akron): Religious conservatives are not completely shut out because, of course, they still do have some Republican and even some of conservative Democratic office holders that pay attention to them. But, really, the access belongs to the other side, to the progressive religious activists, whether they’re Protestants or Catholics or Jews, who very much took advantage of the change in party control in Washington.

LAWTON: And are these moderate and liberal religious activists having an influence? Are they making an impact on policy?

GREEN: Iinfluence is always a difficult thing to judge while a process is under way. You know, we can look back ten years later and say, “Boy, that made a difference.” But it is certainly widely perceived by scholars, by journalists, by other observers that religious progressives are having an impact on the Obama White House, on the Democratic Congress, on the development of a wide range of policy proposals, from health care to climate change to poverty, and so forth. Exactly what that turns out to be we don’t know, because the process is not finished yet.

LAWTON: And what about the mood within these groups on the right and the left? How are they seeing themselves after the last election?

GREEN: The progressive side seems to be very excited right now. They really believe that they are in the ascendancy, that they’ve had some success, and, of course, people can point to some success—that they’re growing, that they’re reaching out to larger groups of people.

Right after the 2008 election there was some real discouragement among religious conservatives, although some of those individuals that I’ve interviewed noted that they were pretty discouraged before the election, because things were not really going the way that they had hoped. But there’s a renewed sense of hope on that side as well. There’s a sense that they have a way that they can now engage in the political process and that some of the things that President Obama wants to do are not very popular with some parts of the public, and religious activists see an opportunity on the right to mobilize some opposition. So they’ve really moved from being quite discouraged to being quite optimistic and quite active. But it’s a different role. It’s the role of being in opposition and not the role of having the insider connections. One of the things we know about religious conservatives, going all the way back to the days of the Moral Majority, is that they tend to prosper in opposition.

LAWTON: Green says one surprising issue that has been galvanizing religious conservatives is health care.

GREEN: You know, who would have thought a few years ago that religious conservatives would be organizing around health care? But, in fact, they are—in some ways to oppose President Obama, but in some ways to try and influence the debate and get whatever outcome actually occurs closer to their values. So it’ll be really kind of interesting to see what happens over the next year, because there might be a lack of access, but there’s no lack of activity among religious conservatives.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: There were controversial developments this week in the debate over how the CIA interrogated terrorism suspects after 9/11. The Justice Department released details of a 2004 CIA inspector general’s report detailing chilling interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. The attorney general ordered an investigation of what happened and appointed a veteran prosecutor to find out.

Did CIA interrogators go beyond the guidance they had? If so, should they be punished, and should Bush administration officials who authorized the techniques also be punished? We explore the moral issues with Shaun Casey, professor of ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington. Shaun, welcome. Let me take you back to the atmosphere right after 9/11. There was tremendous pressure on the administration to prevent another attack, to do whatever was necessary, to find out whatever they could about whether there was going to be another attack. Didn’t that justify the interrogation techniques that were put into place?

SHAUN CASEY (Professor Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC): I would argue that it’s precisely at those moments of crisis that we need to rely on our moral and legal tradition and resist giving up things like respect for the dignity of the human person, and I think that moral tradition argues that no matter who the person is, as a result of that dignity, they shouldn’t be subjected to the kinds of torture we suspect went on.

ABERNETHY: And even if you’re pretty sure you might be able to save several thousand more innocent lives, that would not trump the dignity of the individual prisoner?

PROFESSOR CASEY: What’s interesting even at the time, and now we know for sure, such information did not exist. We did not extract through torture any information that directly led to preventing another similar sort of tragic event. So in essence no, I think we should resist, because we don’t possess that kind of advance knowledge.

ABERNETHY: Apparently the CIA tried hard to keep what was done within the guidelines that existed but that in some cases people did exceed those guidelines. Should they be punished?

PROFESSOR CASEY: Absolutely. I think if in fact we gave guidance to those interrogators, and they still violated those guidelines, there needs to be a moral accountability in order to reinforce this notion that we do respect the dignity of human beings.

ABERNETHY: And what about up the chain of command? If the investigations reveal that high officials, maybe up to the vice president and the president, authorized things that shouldn’t have been done should they be punished?

PROFESSOR CASEY: I think they should be held morally accountable, and that doesn’t necessarily mean criminalization or actual legal punishment, but I think in a democracy that espouses certain moral values we need to have accountability, not only of what has happened, but it also prepares us morally to face the future when we may find ourselves in a similar sort of situation when we’re facing a crisis and we face pressure to abandon legal and moral precedents that we’ve observed.

ABERNETHY: But if a new administration can have a criminal investigation of it’s predecessor and put people perhaps on trial, that creates an enormous partisan gridlock and nothing else would be done.

PROFESSOR CASEY: Well, that’s right, and I think that’s what the president is struggling with right now. We’re looking at simply about 10 cases where he is, actually where the attorney general has asked the prosecutor to investigate. At this point I’m not aware of any attempt for a comprehensive criminal prosecution. On the other hand, I would argue it might be better to think about a bipartisan commission that in a sense grants amnesty legally to all the participants so we can learn what really happened from the top of the system to the bottom, as a way not only of holding them accountable morally but also preparing us to face the future when we may find ourselves under similar circumstances, and I think that’s a way to in a sense take some of the air out of the partisanship which seems to be growing at this time.

ABERNETHY: You have read what you could of the CIA inspector general’s report in 2004. Quickly, can you sum it up? What did you find? What did they conclude?

PROFESSOR CASEY: They concluded that there weren’t a lot of rules in place, and they had to move very quickly to give guidelines, which they did. Secondly, they confessed that some of their own employees violated those guidelines. But perhaps most importantly of all they concluded they cannot say these enhanced interrogation techniques led to unique knowledge that could not have been gotten by other means, and so that really casts a light of doubt on the effectiveness of these techniques.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Shaun Casey of Wesley Theological Seminary.

KIM LAWTON, anchor: One of President Obama’s early moves when he took office six months ago was to establish an unprecedented new council of religious and secular leaders to advise him on faith-related social policy. Evangelical megachurch pastor Joel Hunter from Florida is part of that council. Hunter is becoming an increasingly influential leader for those he calls “a new kind of conservative.” I visited him at his church near Orlando.

KIM LAWTON: It’s Sunday morning and people are heading to church. One might expect them to be bringing along a Bible; maybe their tithes and offerings. But at Northland Church, just outside Orlando, they’re also bringing obsolete computers and printers, old stereos and other hard-to-recycle items. The evangelical megachurch has made a commitment to the environment — what members here call “creation care.” It’s part of a wide-ranging social agenda championed by Northland senior pastor Joel Hunter. He says that agenda signals a maturing of the evangelical movement.

“We want to equip people for living great lives where they are.”

Reverend JOEL HUNTER (Senior Pastor, Northland Church, Florida): We like to call it “growing up.” I think especially in the political realm we went through a phase more recently when we were known for what we were against rather than what we were for. We were pretty narrow in what we were paying attention to rather than very broad. Now that wasn’t true in Jesus’ time, because Jesus was very broad in what he did.

LAWTON: Like most evangelicals, Hunter opposes abortion and gay marriage. But his agenda also includes the environment and issues of poverty, torture, peace and interfaith dialogue. Hunter does describe himself as a pro-life registered Republican. Yet his views captured the attention of President Barack Obama. Hunter was part of a group of religious leaders who prayed privately with Obama during the campaign, and he’s now a member of Obama’s advisory council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships.

Hunter believes evangelicals have a spiritual obligation to have a positive influence wherever God places them, even if that may be among Democrats.

Rev. HUNTER: I hope that along the way I could be of encouragement in the president’s spiritual life because that’s what a pastor does, that’s what we care about. But beyond that, I’m very excited about working with a very broad spectrum of people to see how our faith communities can really solve the problems, or help solve the problems, of this country.

LAWTON: Despite his national responsibilities, Hunter makes it clear that his base of operations is Northland. The nondenominational church was started by 11 people in 1972.  Hunter, who was a United Methodist pastor, came here in 1985. Today, about 12,000 people attend the church every week.  Northland calls itself “a Church Distributed.”

Rev. HUNTER: We emphasize what goes on outside the building rather than what goes on inside the building, and we want to equip people for living great lives where they are.

“Only God can move in the spirit to change somebody’s heart or to establish a relationship.”

LAWTON: The Internet helps with that distribution. Thousands of people around the world participate in the worship services through an innovative online Web cast.

Rev. HUNTER: So when we built this building, we built it as a communications device, and the selling point to the congregation was look, you’re not building a building that can just seat 3,000 people at a time. We can seat three million people at a time if we have enough broadband and we have enough people who can gather around a computer screen.

(speaking to audience):  And for those of you who are worshipping with us online . . .

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1:  Let’s hear from a couple of folks who worship with us online.

Rev. HUNTER:  Somebody texted in from the last service . . .

LAWTON: Some people watch individually, others gather in small groups in people’s homes, fast-food restaurants, even a prison. Northland knows of alternative worship sites as far away as Argentina, Egypt and Ukraine. As the church grew, so did Hunter’s vision of having an impact on the wider culture. In July of 2006, he was chosen to be the new president of the Christian Coalition of America, the political advocacy group founded by Pat Robertson. But Hunter withdrew even before he took office when it became clear that coalition members were uncomfortable with his broad issue agenda.

LAWTON: Mark Pinsky is a veteran religion writer in Orlando who has covered Hunter for 14 years.

MARK PINSKY (Religion Writer): Even though he didn’t take that job, eventually he was forced out, he really won, because the issues on which he lost his job were the right issues as far as the coming evangelical movement is concerned.

LAWTON: In many ways, Hunter has become a national voice for evangelicals seeking a new style of leadership.

Mark Pinsky

Rev. HUNTER: There is a whole new generation of young evangelicals that are coming up that really don’t care about any of the labels. I mean, they could care less — Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative — they don’t care. What they care about is can we change the world for the better?

LAWTON: But Hunter still gets push-back from evangelical traditionalists.

Mr. PINSKY: He believes in making coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis, and that puts them together with, sometimes, with people who support abortion rights, for example. But there are people in the evangelical movement both in his congregation and nationally who won’t do that, who won’t sit down at the table with people they don’t agree with on other issues.

LAWTON: Hunter has also made some evangelicals uncomfortable by building coalitions with people from other faiths. He’s part of a project to improve dialogue between Islam and the West, and he advocates building strong personal relationships with people from other religions.

Rev. HUNTER: The better relationship you build, the more free you are to share with people what you really believe, and then you let God take care of the rest. It’s not my job to convert people, you know? Only God can move in the spirit to change somebody’s heart or to establish a relationship.

LAWTON: Hunter raised a lot of eyebrows when he tried to show interfaith respect at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He was chosen to give the closing prayer after Obama’s acceptance speech. When he got to the end, he stopped and gave the crowd some instructions.

Rev. HUNTER (at DNC): On the count of three, I want all of you to end this prayer, your prayer, the way you usually end prayer.

To make somebody or to cow somebody into silence as you pray in Jesus’ name, or to somehow make them seem like they’re praying in Jesus’ name is really a sacrilege, because only Christians can pray in Jesus’ name.

(at DNC): One-two-three:  In Jesus’ name, Amen. Let’s go change the world for good.

LAWTON: He got some strong reactions afterward.

Rev. HUNTER: On the one side, I had a wonderful encouragement especially from non-Christians, you know, and from many Christians who understood what I was doing. I got raked over the coals with a lot of Christians because I didn’t hijack the prayer and pray it only for Christians.

LAWTON: There are those who worry that Hunter’s relationship with Obama, and his position on the advisory council, could hinder the pastor’s ability to speak truth to power.

Rev. HUNTER: The president has made it very clear — and this is another thing I like about him — is he is not looking for “yes” people here. He’s looking for people on this council that will have a prophetic voice, and all of us made the agreement that we would not be on the council unless we could be blunt-honest.

LAWTON: Hunter acknowledges it can be a heady thing to be inside the Oval Office, and he knows power can be seductive. He tries to keep it in perspective.

Rev. HUNTER: The idea here that goes through my mind is that this is not the person that I’m going to be answering to. That’s a way higher thing, and on judgment day when I stand before God, I’m going to have to answer to what I’ve said.

LAWTON: Hunter says his family and his church life keep him grounded. He says he doesn’t seek the limelight. In fact, he really doesn’t like it at all.

Rev. HUNTER: I have no desire for people to really know who I am. I’m an — you wouldn’t believe this — but I’m an introvert. You know, I could spend all day in a library and just be perfectly content as long as my wife was one stack over.

Mr. PINSKY: No one is perfect, and he’s not perfect. He’s a man of some ambition, I think he will admit to that. But he lives his faith, he has a good family life, at least that which we can see. He doesn’t live extravagantly. He’s relatively modest in the way he lives his life, and with him I really believe what you see is what you get.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2 (speaking to Rev. Hunter): I’ve probably trusted God more than I ever have.

Rev. HUNTER: That’s so great.  That is so great.

LAWTON: For Hunter, it all comes down to a simple calculus.

Rev. HUNTER: I think what I do is not so different than anybody else except maybe in different circles, but I just live my life as best I can, and I just pray that I’ll do God some good.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in Orlando.

Joel Hunter

Q: Tell me about Northland Church. Obviously, it’s grown so quickly. It’s so large. What need do you think the church is meeting? What is the niche that is really filled here?

A: This sounds awful, but I think we’re just a generic church. I think we care about people, we love people, we try to help them in their spiritual life, try to help them in their practical relationships. The thing that’s probably a little bit different is that we’re a distributed church in that we emphasize what goes on outside the building rather than what goes on inside the building, and we want to equip people for living great lives where they are. So we’re constantly trying to get the resources to them in their everyday lives rather than making them come to a building. But we are just one of 300,000 churches in the US and we don’t count ourselves any better or worse. We’re bigger and we’ve really never been able to figure out why. I got the statistics just for this month, and there is 1200 more attending this month this year than there were this month last year. Nobody can figure out why. We are not a “church growth” church. We just try to preach the best we can from Scripture, try to help people where they are in their lives and love them and encourage them—people are desperate for encouragement—and try to help the world get better. And whether that is about community service or it’s about shaping social policy, whatever that’s about, we are trying to make this world more like heaven. Jesus taught us to pray that “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So that’s what we’re trying to do.

Q: You have also used technology, especially online. Why did you choose to use that route to help minister to more people?

A: Most people don’t really want to go into a church building. They have a very personal relationship with God, and they would rather be in a familiar territory when they worship. This goes a lot for the younger generation. My generation is kind of used to church, doing the “church” thing, but a lot of people aren’t. So when we built this building we built it as a communications device, and the selling point to the congregation was you are not building a building that can just seat 3000 people at a time. We can seat three million people at a time if we have enough broadband, and we have enough people who can gather around a computer screen, worship with others, and so we have people worshipping in Starbucks. We’ve had a person, when it came time to take membership vows, and he had to catch a plane, he was in the airport, he stood up in the airport and took his membership vows because he was online with us and he was going through the worship service with us. So we just wanted to not be geographically limited, and we have partners all over the world, and we don’t want to be culturally limited either, so we will worship with them periodically. We worship with our partners in Egypt or Ukraine or other places, and they do the same. There’s just a lot more of the church now that is using technology to build relationships, because people of my generation—it was important to be in a building together. For people who are 30 years old, that screen is intimacy to them. I mean, that’s a window to them, and there’s nothing artificial to them about that, and so we just wanted to connect with as many people as we could.

Q: Does that change the nature of what happens on Sunday morning, what happens inside the worship service?

A: It does. We are very aware of the congregation that is not in this building. We have several different congregations in buildings around central Florida. We have probably 1200 or 1500 sites around the nation and the world at any given time worshipping with us in the worship service. So when we take Communion we say at the beginning, “Get your Communion elements because we will be taking Communion together.” When we ask for people to contribute, for example, their favorite Scripture on hope, we will have some people in the main headquarters sanctuary, so to speak, but we will have somebody from Germany: “This just in from Christina in Germany, this in from Suzie in South Dakota., this is from…,” and so all of them can participate whether or not they are onsite.

Q: Shifting beyond here and looking at the evangelical world a little more broadly, I’ve heard some people suggest that perhaps evangelicalism is in a bit of identity crisis right now, trying to figure out who they are, where they are going. Do you agree with that characterization?

A: Well, we like to call it growing up. I think there is an ever-maturing identity for evangelicals. I think especially in the political realm we went through a phase more recently when we were known for what we were against rather than what we were for. We were pretty narrow in what we were paying attention to rather than very broad. Now that wasn’t true in Jesus’ time, because Jesus was very broad in what he did, very positive, very loving. And so I think the church in different cultures goes through different phases according to what is happening in that culture. But I do think that evangelicalism is changing, and you will always have people who are just kind of staunch and, you know, mad: “I want to talk about these, and anybody who doesn’t agree with me probably isn’t really, you know, on the mark.” But I think much more of evangelicalism now, especially when you talk about the next generation, really isn’t so bound up with some of the more institutional concerns. They really are saying, “Church? Fine. All the traditional things? Great. But just tell me how I can help. Tell me what I can do to be more like Jesus in world, to love people like he loved them, to serve people like he served them. It’s much more important to me than knowing theological intricacies to be practically of use and of good.” And so I think you’re seeing a maturing of the movement right now.

Q: I want to talk about politics in a minute, but what are the spiritual implications or challenges that go along with that kind of a shift?

A: The spiritual challenge here is that you have to know Scripture well enough to go back to the source and to be able to focus on God instead of an institutional church. Not in lieu of, you know, the institutional church is still valuable. It’s a place of belonging, it’s a place of help, it’s a place of teaching, but having said all that, if your emphasis is following God in your everyday life for the people who are right in front of you, then you’re going to have to have the kind of relationship with God, a personal relationship with God, that doesn’t require a church program in order for you to act. And so along with this maturing of evangelical Christianity, there has to be a more practical kind of education religiously. In other words, it can’t be just “I’ve got to memorize the Apostle’s Creed.” It is, “I’ve got to know in this situation what would Jesus do and I’ve got to take responsibility for doing it.” And so that’s kind of where things are going right now.

Q: Some people are suggesting there is a leadership void compared to previous generations. Do you see that?

A: It’s always tricky when you talk about Protestantism, because we don’t have a pope, you know? And with some of the passing of the old lions—you know, the Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and some these old folks that everybody kind of looked to because they were world-famous leaders—you do have another generation. And, again, with these past few decades people looked at some of the more public faces, the more mobilizing voices, the [Rev. D. James] Kennedys and the Falwells and all of the rest of the folks that really got a lot of media time. What you’re seeing is a very solid group of evangelical leaders developing and kind of a new constituency growing up with a broader agenda. You will never see just one person leading the way, because evangelicals don’t do that. We are much more collaborative in our leadership, much more appreciative of the differences, and we operate well in ambivalence. But what you will see is a new generation of leaders, some of them my age, some of the younger, because they’re gifted, they have great visions, they mobilize great organizations. So that’s what you’re going to see in the years to come.

Q: What are your hopes for Obama’s faith advisory council that you’re a part of?

A: The hopes are very new, because this has just started, just started, so I’m not sure of all of their hopes for this advisory council. I know we have been given four priorities, but there is a larger development here. First of all, I have great respect for the president, and I respect his personal belief in God and his desire to want to do the right thing as far as God is concerned, and I so respect his observation and respect for the largely religious character of this nation and his acknowledgment that you can’t separate that religious character from political life, and so why not try to incorporate it in its breadth, in a broad spectrum, and use the mobilization possibilities to really get people of faith to serve and improve the nation? So I love that. That’s what I would hope for this particular advisory council—that we could work on a broad policy agenda that would mobilize people to actualize their faith. Now as a pastor, see, I always want to be of spiritual encouragement to someone, so I hope that along the way I could be of encouragement to the president’s spiritual life, because that’s what a pastor does. That’s what we care about. But beyond that I’m very excited about working with a very broad spectrum of people to see how our faith communities can really solve the problems, or help solve the problems of this country. The problems of this country and of the world are way too big for a government to solve, and way too big for faith communities to solve. We have to partner together, and if we can do it in ways that don’t blur the lines between the institutions of religion and government, and that’s very important, the institutions, I say, you know, not the individuals, because those lines are already blurred, but we’ve got to watch the boundaries of church and state. Those are very important. But there is so much that can be done. I mean, 99 percent of the stuff that we do can be done without even going near the boundaries of church and state, because they can be personal, they can be community-based, they can be faith-based individually, and for us to feel like we’re a part of solving the countries problems when we are in such deep weeds right now as a country, I mean economically, there’s so many people hurting economically, there’s so many people who are confused about the kind of lifestyle questions and the kind of cultural wars going on. If we can be called into service, then we cannot only help the country, we can help the church mature. This isn’t just about helping the country. The church needs to mature itself. Sometimes I think people think the church can save the country, when really some types of political responsibility can help save the church from just dabbling in religious intricacies.

Q: Is there a danger, though, that being in an official capacity, even though I understand it’s not government employment, could in some way blunt or make one reluctant to perhaps be prophetic or to, as people say, speak truth to power? I’ve had a conversation with someone who says no pastor or priest should be a part of something like that because then he or she can’t really speak the truth to these people.

A: Well, I agree that no coward should ever be part of something like this, but the president has made it very clear—and this is another thing I like about him—he is not looking for “yes” people here. He’s looking for people on this council that will have a prophetic voice, and all of us made the agreement that we would not be on the council unless we could be blunt-honest about the dangers we saw, about what was not going right, and what we had real problems with, and probably what we couldn’t participate in. And so there’s not only a permission to be prophetic, there’s a desire to hear that voice, because when that voice gets raised it’s not just your voice; it’s the constituency you come from, and any political leader, if he’s honest, and if he wants what he’s going to do to last, is going to have to hear what constituencies have to say, not just what people in his office will say in order to get into his good graces. So that is a danger, absolutely. But we’ve addressed that, and we will continue to address that.

Q: I interviewed some years ago a clergy member who was close to the Clintons. During a difficult time he was brought in as a spiritual advisor, and he was candid about sitting in the Oval Office and having the leader of the free world talk to him, and it’s pretty heady stuff, and I’m wondering if you’re at all concerned about being pulled into that in a way that might change you in some way or have an effect on you.

A: Yeah, you’re always concerned about that. I mean, if you are human and you realize the position of power that this person has, then you are aware that this is an honor, this is a privilege, I mean, to be in the Oval Office, to walk in there and to look at that desk where the presidents have just signed these tremendous bills and have changed—and all the people that have been in that Oval Office. There’s a sense of history, and I was a history and government major, and so there’s a real sense of privilege. However, you say all that, you can say all that, and you’ve got to realize what happens with me personally, I just don’t take myself that seriously. I mean, I don’t feel like I’m somebody that’s got that much power, or there’s nothing else I want to get to, you know, I’m going to be a pastor for the rest of my life. There’s nothing I have to lose. Here’s a guy that’s going to be there eight years at the longest, you know? And so the idea here that goes through my mind is this is not the person that I’m going to be answering to. That’s a way higher thing, and on Judgment Day when I stand before God I’m going to have to answer to what I’ve said. If I didn’t do things according to how I read them in Scripture, if I didn’t voice the truth in love as I saw it in Scripture, then I’m in judgment, I’m in trouble on Judgment Day for my works, not for my sins those have been paid for by Christ, but for my works, so that’s the accountability that I have, and for those of us that—you know, most of the people in that room have been in positions of authority for a long time. That’s why we’re in that room, and so we’re not quite as intimidated as—I mean, we’re used to talking with people in authority, we’re used to having phone conversations where you get off the phone and you go, how did I get to be in this place that I just had that conversation? So it’s not quite as intimidating as it might be, as it might seem, but yet you’ve got to watch yourself, and I have to keep saying, “Lord, this is for you. I’m here to do your work. I’m here to be a voice for the gospel as well as I can,” and if that gets me off the council in a record time, then I’m off the council in a record time.

Q: How do you stay spiritually grounded to have that kind of strength or fortitude?

A: Well, first of all it’s important for me every day to spend a good deal of time in Scripture and in prayer. That’s kind of like the, you know, I do the—physically I work out every day, you know, so I can stay healthy. Spiritually that keeps me healthy; it keeps me oriented in the right direction. Secondly, I’m surrounded by people who tell me the truth. My wife tells me the truth, but my wife is my biggest fan. She doesn’t tell me the truth to take me down a peg or two. She just thinks I hung the moon. I have no idea why she thinks that. She’s fooled herself all of these years, and I’m not telling her anything different. But the point is that I don’t have to seek approval of other people. I’ve got a wonderful family, my wife and my kids and our grandkids, so it’s not that I’m looking for something else, and when you are satisfied with the love that you have, when you realize that you walk in the grace of God, when you realize that your family is just as crazy about you and you’re crazy about your family, then it’s fairly simple not to take yourself so seriously and have to be a world-changer and get all distracted with all of these grandiose ideals and ideas. You can just get up every day and do what’s right with what’s right in front of you, help out whoever you can, and go to bed every night and sleep like a baby, and so that’s just—I think I’ve got a life like anybody else. I think what I do is not so different than anybody else, except maybe in different circles, but I just live my life as best I can, and I just pray that I’ll do God some good.

Q: You’ve been active in some interfaith circles. I know you’ve worked on Islamic-US issues and other interfaith things. How do you relate across religious lines, offering respect to people you differ with theologically without in some way compromising your own faith or what you believe to be truth? How do you walk that line? A lot of people have a hard time figuring out how to do that.

A: First of all, it’s fairly simple to maintain respect and even admiration when you get to know people. I love these guys, I really do. I mean these other faith leaders, as I listen to them I’m much more fascinated in listening to their stories and their perspectives. I need their perspectives to get a fuller picture of who God is as a Christian, I mean, because it’s not like God is absent or God has somehow avoided Muslims or Jews or all the rest of these folks. They have a faith that I think appreciates a side of God that I could find in Christianity, but I see it more readily when I’m with them. So in a way they are a spiritual mentor to me. Having said that, though, Christianity is a faith of relationships, of a personal relationship with God made possible through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, so therefore, as I have these relationships with other faith leaders, as they get closer, we are very free in talking about what we believe and about—I am more free many times in talking in about what Christ has done for me and about what price he paid on the cross for all people with another religious leader who wants to hear what I want to say. He doesn’t want me to tip-toe around it; he wants me to be honest. I’m sometimes more free with a person like that than I am with a person in an elevator where he may have been a Christian a long time ago, and my eye starts twitching when I start talking about it. So the point here is that the better relationship you build, the more free you are to share with people what you really believe, and then you let God take care of the rest. It’s not my job to convert people, you know? Only God can move in the spirit to change somebody’s heart and establish a relationship. I can’t do that, so I don’t have to worry about it. I just love them and serve them as best I can, and we swap stories, and I leave the rest to God.

Q: How serious do you think the issues of these interfaith relations are in our world today?

A: I think they are absolutely critical for the future. I cannot picture a long-lasting peace without religious leaders having actual relationship together and caring about one another, because if all you have are these tender and vulnerable treaties, you know, these diplomatic papers, and you still have a bunch of people at these grass roots or a bunch of religious leaders that not only distrust people who are different but that are angry at people who are different, then that peace isn’t going to last very long at all, and we’ll never be able to cooperate in solving some of the larger problems of the world. However, if faith leaders and ultimately people of different faiths can serve together, can get to know each other on a personal basis, can appreciate each other as a person and as a person of faith, I’m telling you, that will move the ball down the field when it comes to world peace. So I just don’t see long-lasting peace in any section of the world happening without faith-based community relationships, interfaith relationships.

Q: What have you learned from your relationships, especially with Muslims, which has been a particularly tense one in our country?

A: Yeah, it has, and I have such a deep appreciation for my relationships with Muslim leaders. First of all, they are very honest about what they think and about—Christians by and large are scared to death of Muslims. But Muslims have at least been trained as to respect Jesus. They believe Jesus was a prophet. They believe in the virgin birth. They believe in many of the issues, and so for many Muslims it’s good to talk with a Christian. What are we scared about here? In this culture, we have been so slanted by the association of Islam with terrorism that we’re very reluctant to have that conversation. So every conversation I get in, it’s really one of respect. Muslims have a tremendous reverence for God, tremendous reverence for God, and I love that, and they have—they really want to know what you think, and how we can work together, and what are we afraid of here? So I have built several very close relationships in the Muslim world, a very close relationship with an imam here in town. He’s one of my very good friends. We do a lot together. I love him, and I love his family. The same ob-gyn delivers his babies that deliver my grandbabies. We’ve just got this relationship. So basically what I’ve learned is we’re trying to love God as best we can, and we’re trying to work together to love other people.

Q: We have footage of a recycling event your church has done, and I know this has been an issue for you quite some time—creation care. I am wondering if you are seeing with the evangelical world a greater embrace of this issue. For a long time there just seemed to be a real reluctance to get involved. Are you seeing that change, and have you felt that impact?

A: There is a change. Again, this may have to be a generational change, but we’re talking more and more with leaders. We just hosted an event last week of evangelical leaders here addressing just exactly that challenge. There’s two problems here. First of all, people are generally ignorant about the science. All they hear are the sound bites on the radio and the sound bites on the television, and they have been linking this issue with a political agenda rather than an actual consensus of science, and so many evangelical Christians are reluctant to see this as a consensus, so there’s a lot of teaching that needs to be done. The second problem is people really don’t address a problem until it’s an emergency, and so they’ll look out the window and say, “Man, it really looks cold out there. Must not be global warming, you know?” And they’ll read this stuff that says coldest January on record and say pshaw, and so instead of understanding this is not about global warming, it’s about global weirding, about the nonlinear effects of climate change, and there are very many new nuances of climate change and understanding the interaction of a very complex system, but yet the ultimate and undeniable effect that this is going to have on the poor—they just kind of brush it off, so we have our work laid out for us. But I do believe that, again, this administration is going to be helpful because they take the problem seriously, and maybe as more and more leaders acknowledge the problem the general population will, too, but in the evangelical world we’re still having a push back.

Q: Our show did a survey which found that larger numbers of younger evangelicals do see things like the environment and poverty as pro-life issues.

A: Exactly. Again, this goes along with expanding the issue, not in lieu of, not denying the others. Pro-life is very important and will always remain in the foreseeable future a central issue for me and other evangelical leaders. But to expand the pro-life movement to the life outside the womb, to understand that 5,000 children under five die every day from poverty-related causes, directly related to poverty, that’s a pro-life issue; to understand that AIDS is a pro-life issue; to understand that climate change, to understand that even in some instances our issues with immigration, all these other issues, certainly peace, world peace—pro-life issues. These should be just as important to us, those lives should be just as important to us as the baby in the womb, and so we just have to expand that picture.

Q: I want to ask you about your prayer at the Democratic Convention. The issue is always whether or not to pray in Jesus’ name, and you chose to work around that. What kind of reaction did you get?

A: Oh, on the one side I had a wonderful encouragement, especially from non-Christians and from many Christians who understood what I was doing. I got raked over the coals with a lot of Christians because I didn’t hijack the prayer and only pray it for Christians. But as I explained, several things: first of all, we did get, the Christians got to say “in Jesus’ name,” so we didn’t deny anybody that, and if you were there the stadium was booming with that. By the same token, to make somebody or to cow somebody to silence as you pray in Jesus’ name, or to somehow make them seem like they’re praying in Jesus’ name, is really a sacrilege because only Christians can pray in Jesus’ name. It’s in the power of Jesus, so it’s the wrong way to use that ending. If you’re serious about it you can’t use it asking people who don’t believe it to say it. Ultimately, the greatest thing about this was that not only was it a prayer appropriate for a public venue where people had different faith traditions, but my wife sat beside a lady on a plane on the way back, and she said, “Your husband was the one who said that prayer?” and she said “Yeah.” She said, “I was so shocked that an evangelical would respect those of us, I’m an atheist, but I was so shocked that an evangelical would actually respect me enough not to make me go there and not hijack that prayer.” And Becky said, because she’s just really interested in people, “Tell me about what you believe, tell me why you’re an atheist.” Well, they talked for the whole plane ride, and by the time the plane landed the lady goes, “I live 30 minutes from your church. Give me your address, and I’m going to show up just to check it out.” Well, I mean, just the—this isn’t about who gets converted, this is about someone feeling respected enough that they would give a window in their life, as it was very apparent from the beginning of that conversation that she wanted nothing to do with the evangelicals, but because I had respected her then there’s some openness to say, well, maybe we can have a relationship. That was wonderful.

Q: As you’ve done interviews and gotten more attention, people around the country are getting to know you. I’m wondering what you feel people don’t know about you that you wish they did, as they’re making judgments and assumptions?

A: You know, I don’t—I have no desire for people to really know who I am. I’m an—you wouldn’t believe this, but I’m an introvert. I could spend all day in a library and just be perfectly content, as long as my wife was one stack over. These things really stretch me, you know. I feel like I’m put here for a reason, but I’m not a very self-revealing person. I just do what I can, and there’s really not much there to know, honestly. I’m just real simple. I get up every day and I eat and I study and I talk to people and I try to help where I can, so there’s not much to find out.

Welcome to you both. Professor Nasr, let’s begin with you. The reaction throughout the Muslim world — what do you hear?

Dr. VALI NASR (Professor of International Relations, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University): Very, very positive. There’s no doubt that the speech exceeded expectations from the vast majority of Muslims all the way from Indonesia to Nigeria. Even though the president did not go deeply into policy, I think the level of respect and empathy and seriousness that he showed in terms of engaging the Muslim world was very well understood by the public and very much appreciated.

ABERNETHY: On the other hand, Kate, there was a lot of criticism, wasn’t there, or some guarded comments from officials?

Kate Seelye

KATE SEELYE (Vice President, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC): Well, there were. I think people are—there are some who are holding reservations. They want to see if he’s going to translate his words into action. There was also some disappointment on the part of democracy activists who wanted him to be tougher, let’s say, on Arab leaders, who wanted to put more pressure on them. And there were some who wanted him to be tougher on the Israelis. But by and large, people were very positive and felt that he went out of his way to try to bridge this gap between America and the Muslim world.

ABERNETHY: What could be the deeds now that would satisfy the people to whom Obama was talking?

Dr. NASR: I think one of the ways to look at this is that the speech or the series of speeches he’s given is a deed in itself. In other words, our habit in this region is that administrations come up immediately off the bat with a plan of action for something, whether it’s Iran, Arab-Israeli issue, Afghanistan. This president understood that there is no point trying a new policy before you change the context in which you engage the other side. So I think his very first policy, his very first deed has been to gain trust, and I think the first way in which he has to be measured is by trust, and I think Kate’s point, which is correct, there are — I think he’s been successful enough that some actors like the Iranian government or Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood may worry that he’s quickly changing the game on them very fast and effectively, and some of the reaction we’re seeing has to do with that.

Bob Abernethy

ABERNETHY: But a specific deed now to follow this, Kate, what could that be?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, I mean everybody’s waiting to see what he’s going to do vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli peace process. What steps he is going to take to pressure the Israelis perhaps to halt settlement building. This is what Arabs and Muslims are looking for — concrete deeds with regard to the peace process, frankly.

ABERNETHY: Did you feel on that that he was tilting a little bit toward the Palestinians?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, he acknowledged the Holocaust, he acknowledged the suffering of the Jews, and he also acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians, and this was really a first. Many presidents have acknowledged the need for a two-state solution, but few have said, you know, I feel for the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. He won high marks for that.

ABERNETHY: I was struck by the language, especially the references to the Qu’ran and other phrases that come out of the Islamic tradition. That can’t help but have helped him in the Muslim world.

Dr. NASR: Absolutely. I mean, there are ways of using the Qu’ran and then there are ways of using the Qu’ran. Often Western commentators or leaders usually use the Qu’ran in order to hit the Muslims on the head with it. In other words, use their own scripture in order to preach to them very selectively. This president, I think, has used a very light touch in terms of trying to use the Qu’ran to convince the Muslims that he believes they belong inside the tent — that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition with the Muslim standing out there. The way he used the Qu’ran, particularly at the end, was to say that there is an Islamic-Judeo-Christian civilization—that your values are the same as our values and our values are the same as your values, and look, here is the example by referring to all three scriptures at the same time, and I think that’s what’s most effective.

ABERNETHY: And as you said, this attempt to build respect with the audience he was talking to is the first step in new policy?

Vali Nasr

Dr. NASR: Well, absolutely. If you looked at the Bush administration, their approach was that you are either with us or you’re against us. It’s either black or white, and the burden was on Muslims to prove themselves innocent. In other words they’re guilty unless proven innocent, and they set down a set of markers which basically meant abandon your faith, change it, reform it, change everything, and then you’ll be sort of acceptable. This president is starting from a very different point of view. First of all, he’s creating a massive gray area in the middle. It is not either us or you, that we have a common arena in which we share, and the burden is not on Muslims to prove that their religion matters or that their values are world values. He immediately off the bat said, “I agree with that, and I’ll give you better examples than you can yourselves.”

Ms. SEELYE: Yes, and if I might add to that, I mean he was very sensitive about language and Muslim sensitivities. He never once used the word “terrorist,” because over the past eight years the word terrorist has become synonymous with the word Muslim and Islam. So he avoided these words, and he used language that people applauded. When he talked about the Prophet Muhammad he said “peace be upon him.” That was very important for Islamists and traditionalists watching his speech.

ABERNETHY: What about nuclear weapons? What can you divine in the speech about how that problem can be addressed now?

Dr. NASR: That’s a problem that has to be solved at the negotiation table, and we will not see where it is going until the day the United States and Iran are sitting at the table and discussing it. But I think the president is trying to make it easier or in some ways compel the Iranian government not to hide behind excuses that Americans are not sincere, they’re not serious, there’s no point talking to them. To say that you — look, there is a pathway for you to come in, and the United States is going to engage Iran over these very serious issues from a position of respect.

ABERNETHY: Kate, did you hear anything from people you know in the Muslim part of the world about what we’re talking about? Did anybody say anything to you?

Ms. SEELYE: Oh, absolutely. I had some blogger friends from Saudi Arabia say that they were thrilled by this speech because it wasn’t directed toward Arab leaders. Obama never once mentioned the name of Hosni Mubarak, the host. He was speaking to the youth, to the women, to the people of the Arab world, and that’s very rare in a region where people don’t feel like they’re being addressed by their leaders. Here was this leader of the world superpower saying, “I care about you. I want to help you. Your education is important. Let’s invest in you.” That was profoundly appreciated.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, Kate Seelye, and to Professor Vali Nasr.

Yvonne Haddad is professor of the history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding:

President Obama’s address to Muslims has been received quite enthusiastically by many, particularly those in the audience in Cairo as well as American Muslims who finally heard a president who did not reiterate stereotypes of Islam and Muslims or make reference to “Islamo-fascism” or “Islamic terrorism.” They welcomed his respect and recognition of Islam’s contribution to human civilization. They were specially impressed by his statement that Islam is part of America, after suffering from abusive language and derision for the last eight years. They also welcomed his support for religious freedom and the wearing of the hijab.

Many gushed over the president’s use of the Islamic greeting and his quotations from the Qur’an. His speech has been described by the Council on American Islamic Relations as “comprehensive, balanced, and fair.” He has also been praised as “ambassador for America to the Muslim world.”

Others were not quite as mesmerized by the rhetoric and the oratory of the carefully crafted message. One activist dismissed the speech as “Bush in sheep’s clothing” since it appeared to continue the policies of the Bush administration. These others were concerned that the speech did not break new ground in policy or propose what they consider necessary for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those who have been expecting a new Obama Doctrine were disappointed by the lack of concrete policies to resolve the problem. While some may dismiss their peeves as maximalist demands of short-sighted ideologues unwilling to engage in resolving the outstanding issues except on their terms, they did question several of Obama’s statements. For example, he talked about the slaughter of the innocent in Bosnia and Darfur, but failed to include among the innocents the 1400 Palestinians recently killed in Gaza.

While Obama justifiably condemned the perpetrators of 9/11 for killing “innocent men, women and children,” he made no reference to the peeves of the perpetrators who justified their deed as avenging the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent children in Iraq as a consequence of America’s policy of containment put in place after the first Gulf War.

While Obama talked about Palestinian Christians and Muslims who have “suffered in pursuit of a homeland,” he did not recognize that they had been expelled from their homeland due to Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing. He noted that “Palestinians must abandon violence” and made no reference to Israeli violence that has placed Palestinians within what some refer to as the “apartheid wall.”

While Obama made reference to the Arab peace initiative, he dubbed it as “an important beginning but not the end,” in a sense sanctioning Israel’s perpetual demands for continued concessions.

While Obama reiterated his stance that Israel should freeze the building of settlements, he failed to note that all settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. He did not outline how he will proceed to implement Israeli compliance with the road map peace plan.

Obama’s speech broke new ground. It started the process of helping American Muslims feel once again at home in the United States. It also reassured Muslims overseas that Americans are not after Muslim resources, nor are they engaged in a new Crusade. It put the Muslim world on notice that there is new leadership in America. The world’s Muslims now await the implementation of policies that demonstrate good will and evenhandedness.

Omid Safi is associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Historic. Brilliant. Nearly perfect.

The tone of President Obama’s speech in Cairo was most reminiscent of his masterly speech on race in America: acknowledging open wounds on all sides while laying out a hopeful vision for a shared future. It was a narrative rejecting the neoconservative nightmare of the past eight years that perpetuated the fallacy of the “clash of civilizations.”

Obama began by mapping his hope for a “new beginning between United States and Muslims around the world.” He then offered “the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive…they overlap.…” He went on to identify the common principles between Islam and America: “justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Words have power, and Obama spoke powerful words. He offered the Muslim greeting of peace (al-salam alaykum) to his audience and acknowledged the reality of Western colonialism, as well as his hope for a shared vision of coexistence and peace.

Powerful is the vision of an American president approvingly citing from the Qur’an [chapter 5, verse 32] that to save one human life is akin to saving the life of all humanity, and taking one human life is akin to taking the life of all humanity.

Obama hit many of the right notes. He conveyed to his audience that he is familiar with the vast and glorious history of Islam, such as the long periods of religious tolerance in Andalusia, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in peace under Islamic rule. He praised Muslim contributions to science, philosophy, and learning. His mention of “timeless poetry and cherished music” was a nod to the rich aesthetic tradition of Islamic cultures.

The nuanced position Obama took on Palestine/Israel was the most closely watched component of his speech. The tone was expected, affirming America’s allegedly “unbreakable” bond with Israel while also acknowledging that Palestinians suffer in “intolerable” conditions. Yet the specifics offered were bolder: two states living side by side, a rejection of illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank, and Jerusalem as a city shared by Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Many Muslims were offended that there was no mention of the recent Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Furthermore, it is maddeningly frustrating for Muslims to be repeatedly told they have to recognize Israel’s right to exist when the borders of the state they are being asked to recognize are not specified. Would it be the 1967 borders? 1973? 2009? In addition, this overlooks the multiple times Arab and Muslim states, including Palestinian authorities, have in fact recognized Israel.

As incomplete and, indeed, flawed as that portion of the speech was (delivered under intense preemptive pressure from the Israel lobby), there was a magical, Obama-at-his-best appeal to the Night Journey (Isra) of the Prophet Muhammad, when he prayed together with all the prophets, including Moses and Jesus, in Jerusalem. This is Obama at a level of rhetorical brilliance and inclusiveness that is simply unmatched in American politics.

There were other missed opportunities. There were no critiques of Egypt’s own violations of human rights, something Muslim human rights activists were eager to hear. As a committed Christian, Obama knows all too well the biblical challenge (Matthew 7) “you shall know them by their fruits.”

Obama’s words were historic, brilliant, almost perfect. Now comes the hard part of following up on the beautiful intentions and the inclusive words: righteous and courageous action that brings all those of good will together. He—and we—shall be judged, on Earth and in Heaven, by those actions.

Tariq Ramadan is professor of Islamic studies on the faculty of theology at Oxford University and visiting professor at Erasmus University in the Netherlands:

We are used to nice words, and many in the Muslim majority countries as well as Western Muslims have ended up not trusting the United States when it comes to political discourse. They want actions, and they are right. This is, indeed, what our world needs. Yet President Obama, who is very eloquent and good at using symbols, has provided us in his Cairo speech with something more than simple words. It is altogether an attitude, a mindset, a vision.

In order to avoid shaping a binary vision of the world, Obama referred to “America,” “Islam,” “the Muslims,” and “the Muslim majority countries.” He never fell into the trap of speaking about “us” as different from or opposed to “them,” and he was quick to refer to Islam as being an American reality and to American Muslims as being an asset to his own society. Talking about his own life, he went from the personal to the universal, stating that he knows by experience that Islam is a religion whose message is about openness and tolerance. Both the wording and the substance of his speech were important and new: he managed at the same time to be humble, self-critical, open, and demanding in a message targeting all of “us,” understood as “partners.”

The seven areas Obama highlighted are critical. One might disagree with his reading and interpretation of what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine (and the US role in these conflicts), but he avoided shying away from addressing these issues and called all the parties to take their share of responsibility by putting an end to violence and promoting respect and justice. He clearly acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians and their right to a viable and independent state.

It is a necessary first step. The future will tell us if the new president has the means to be strong and consistent when dealing with the Israeli government. He left open some channels to dialogue with both the Palestinian Authority (calling for unity without sidelining Hamas) and Iran. These remain critical issues, and there will be no future without addressing them with consistency and courage. Expectations are immense, and Obama still has to show his true, practical commitment to justice and peace.

President Obama made an important distinction between democratic principles and political models. The rule of law, free choice of the people, and duty of transparency are universal principles, while political models depend on historical and cultural factors being taken into account. I hope the Obama administration puts this vision into practice by both promoting democratization everywhere and scrupulously respecting the choice of the people. It would be good to start with Iraq and Afghanistan. As to the undisputable principles of democracy, this is a good reminder to utter in Egypt, to the Egyptian government.

President Obama started his speech with the more political issues and quite intelligently ended with the critical areas of women and education. This is where, he recalled, we all have to do much better. In these two areas he came to Cairo with practical solutions and presented future interesting projects. Facing economic crisis, doubts, fears, and global threats, the world needs women to be more involved and education to be promoted everywhere. These common challenges helped the president, once again, to talk about an inclusive us, a “new we,” so to say, where we are partners sharing the same concerns, facing up to similar challenges, exposed to common enemies.

This speech was not only directed to the Muslims around the world. The West and non-Muslims should listen. President Obama acknowledged the historical Islamic contribution to scientific development and thought. He wants his fellow American citizens to learn more about Islam, to be more humble, and he expects all “liberals” not to impose their views on practicing Muslims, men and women. No one can impose a way of dressing or a way of thinking, and we should learn from one another. The implicit reference to the French controversy around the headscarf was indeed quite explicit.

The president quoted religious texts from the three monotheistic faiths, everyone of them delivering a universal message, as if true universalism is about educating one’s self, listening to and respecting the other.

Two days before his speech in Cairo, Obama surprisingly stated that America was a great “Islamic country.” It was a way for him to remind Americans, as well as all Westerners, that Muslims are their fellow citizens and Islam is a religion that is part of their common national narrative.

This was a powerful speech that was not only a speech: it embodies a vision both positive and demanding. Something has surely changed. Just as Barack Obama went from personal to universal principles, so we are waiting for him to go from the ideal to the practical. He is young, he is new, he is intelligent and smart. Has he the means to be courageous? For it is all about presidential courage as one wonders if it is possible for the United States to be simply consistent with its own values. Could one man tackle and reform this extraordinary tension that inhabits the contemporary American mindset, on the one hand promoting universal values and diversity while on the other nurturing a spirit that still has some features of imperial attitude intellectually, politically, and economically?

President Obama will not be able to achieve it alone, and maybe his greatest challengers so far are more the Indians and Chinese than the Muslims. Yet it remains critical to acknowledge the positive sides of a speech announcing “a new beginning.” It is imperative for Muslims to take Obama at his word and, instead of adopting either a passive attitude or a victim mentality, to contribute to a better world by being self–critical and critical, humble and ambitious, consistent and open. The best way to push Obama to face up to his responsibility in America, the Middle East, or elsewhere is for Muslims to start by facing up to their own without blindly demonizing America or the West or naively idealizing a charismatic African-American US president.

A personal note: President Obama wants us “to speak the truth.” It happens that once I spoke the truth about the illegal American invasion of Iraq and the blind unilateral support of America towards Israel. I have been banned from the United States and still remain so. It may be one of these inconsistencies that make some of us still doubt the very meaning of political words. Once again, a question of consistency.

Marc Gopin is the James H. Laue Professor and Director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution:

One of the most interesting comments in the speech reflects what the president said in an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman about his strategy for the Middle East: “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working.” This is brilliant as a strategy. It makes every party face up to its private acknowledgments of what is true, and it challenges them to go public. It makes everyone responsible, including America. It is balanced and reasonable. A great start!

Amir Hussain is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles:

As an American Muslim who is also a scholar of Islam in America, I was eagerly anticipating President Obama’s speech in Cairo. I couldn’t be more delighted with what he said. In January of this year, I was in Cairo for a conference sponsored by Al-Azhar University on “Bridges of Dialogue with the West.” That President Obama opened with a mention of Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world and still the seat of Sunni Islamic learning, will certainly be noted by Muslims around the world. That he opened with the basic Muslim greeting, al-salaamu alaikum, and quoted several times from the Qur’an will also be noticed.

There is so much to praise about this speech. First is the historical connection with Muslims and America. This is something dear to me, as I’m currently working on a book for Baylor University Press entitled Building Islam in America. My work in the past dozen years has looked at how American Muslims have adapted to being in a minority, multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious setting in America, where they also have to deal with issues of Western modernity (for example, reactions to gay marriage). The book I am writing turns that question on its head and asks not how have American Muslims changed to accommodate living in America, but how has America been changed by the presence of American Muslims?

President Obama addressed that eloquently, talking about the history of Islam in America. Second, he talked of the mutual misperceptions many Americans have about Islam and many Muslims have about America. The natural bridge here, of course, is American Muslims, who as American Muslims have not just survived but thrived in America. Third, the speech did talk about sensitive issues such as nuclear weapons in Iran and the Israeli/Palestinian peace process. While some may be critical about President Obama not going far enough on this, his words resonated with me about the need for a secure Israel but also a Palestine where Palestinians can live in safety and dignity.

It has been a long time since a speech by a politician resonated so deeply with me. God bless President Obama, and God bless us all.

Ali S. Asani is professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic religion and cultures at Harvard University:

One day after President Obama’s historic address to the world’s Muslims, every word, every phrase, every sentence of his speech is being carefully parsed. The aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror have created a noxious atmosphere rife with misunderstandings, mutual hatred, and stereotypes. For many Americans, Islam and Muslims have become the “other,” while many Muslims have come to perceive America and Americans as a mortal enemy.

How will this speech impact the polarized relationship of the United States government with Muslim communities and nations around the world? What are its implications for US foreign and domestic policy? Worldwide reactions to the speech are also being analyzed. The verdict is mixed. Some loved it, some thought it did not go far enough, and a few objected to it as being apologetic, full of niceties but no real substance. What is easy to lose sight in all this analysis is that, for many Muslims, Barack Obama embodies in his person someone they admire and can relate to and, yes, perhaps even trust.

During a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, a Saudi guide told me that when he heard Americans had elected Barack Hussein Obama as their president, tears of joy welled up in his eyes. “If the great American people can elect a man with Obama’s background to be their president,” he said, “then there is hope that anything is possible. Change can happen, perhaps even in Saudi Arabia itself. I admire that man and what he stands for.”

I have heard similar comments from Muslims in Egypt, Dubai, Pakistan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and India. Such remarks remind us that the United States has in its current president a man with an uncommon background and personality who is uniquely qualified to deliver an unprecedented message of hope and understanding to a world characterized by globalization, interdependence, and diversity. As the Christian son of an African Muslim father who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and members of whose family are Muslims, the American president has lived and engaged with many kinds of differences –- racial, religious, ethnic, national.

Engaging with those who are different from oneself is not an easy task. It is a struggle that tests one’s patience and humility, but it is a worthwhile struggle, for we learn not only to see the world from another perspective but to respect that perspective. When President Obama spoke to an audience of three thousand at the University of Cairo, he embodied for them the values he referred to in his address — respect for difference, human dignity, humility, and intercultural understanding. When he quoted the Qur’an, “Be conscious of God and speak the truth,” and went on to speak the truth as he saw it, he represented in his person and demeanor that honesty. When he said that it was his responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative and crude stereotypes of Islam and Muslims as well as of America and Americans, he spoke as a pluralist who understood from personal experience the dehumanizing nature of stereotypes. In a different world Roger Ailes would have said, “He was the message.”

Barack Obama’s charisma, so apparent during his address, is based on his humanity and humanism. It is true that one speech cannot change the course of history, but what is becoming increasingly clear is that President Obama is rapidly becoming a hero, if he is not already, for many around the world, regardless of their national and religious affiliation, including many Muslims. In this sense, he is the worst nightmare not only for al-Qaeda but for all those who believe in the clash of civilizations and insist on using difference to dehumanize the “other” – whoever the “other” may be.

The ultimate challenge is: will the world heed his call to join hands for the betterment of “us” all rather than being intent on destroying the “other”? Will it realize the truth that he has come to recognize, a truth echoed in a Qur’anic verse he cited at the end of his speech: God created diversity so that we may learn from one another?

Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Professor of Law at UCLA:

After eight years of boorish, war-mongering speeches and policies by the Bush administration, there is no doubt President Obama’s ecumenical speech in Cairo fell upon warm ears.

Obama spoke to Muslims as human beings, and Muslims who have grown so accustomed to being caste into the archetype of the counterpoint—the archetype that helps define the West by being its antithesis—were jubilant. Once again, Muslims learned that they can never enjoy the kind of privileged “unbreakable bond” that is exclusively reserved for the VIP members of the Western club, but Muslims were jubilant to learn that they are not members of the caste of lowly untouchables.

In his typically dignified and studious demeanor, Obama told Muslims he respects their faith and culture, he does not approve of religious bigotry, and he recognizes that Muslims have made numerous contributions to world civilization. He rightly refused the same old polarizing arguments: no to the clash of civilizations model, no to “cosmic wars” against jihadists or political Islam, and no to other grandiose yet reductionist stereotypes typical of the Bush era which sorted the world into a pile of good guys and a pile of bad guys.

Obama also soundly condemned the trendy pseudo-intellectual practice of professionalized Islam-hating masquerading as national security. He not only acknowledged that it was now part of his job to fight negative stereotypes of Islam, as well as negative stereotypes of the West, but he also had the moral courage to do something that through the agonizing years of colonialism, imperialism, and Western interventionism Muslims have rarely had the privilege of observing a Western leader do: admit to having unlawfully overthrown a legitimate and popular government in a Muslim country (President Musaddaq in Iran).

So it is no surprise that today, all over the Arab media, Arabs and Muslims are excited that Obama openly expressed respect for their faith and culture. After all, as many scholars have pointed out, one of the main grievances of Muslims in the age of modernity is the denial of liberty and dignity.

But the same media outlets that express such high approbation and admiration for Obama are also expressing severe anxiety and skepticism about whether this speech heralds the dawn of a new age or is just a new face for the same old western talk-a-lot, do-little that Muslims have become all too accustomed to since colonialism.

Paradoxes and inconsistencies have been the earmark of the modern age for Muslims—a world of smoke and mirrors. Indeed, the history of modern Muslim nations can be summed up in a dramatic narrative of competing promises by competing superpowers to competing regional powers, and the end result is people with tragic let-downs and broken dreams.

For instance, although President Obama delivered a wonderful speech about new beginnings, human rights, and mutual respect, it doesn’t change the fact that on the way to Egypt he first stopped in Saudi Arabia, the motherland of Wahhabism, the most puritanical, intolerant, and oppressive Muslim state. It leaves one wondering, was President Obama getting their approval? Was he assuring them not to feel threatened by his speech about human rights and the rights of women to equality?

Reminiscent of visits to Egypt by Presidents Nixon and Carter in the past, President Obama’s trip to Cairo was preceded by mass arrests and vast human rights abuses. One of the most influential intellectual leftist critics, Qamdil, disappeared and is believed to have been murdered by security forces. Notably, the Egyptian government’s targeting of dissidents was not limited to those who would be critical of President Obama’s visit to Egypt but actually included many Islamists known for their positive outlook towards the West.

Worst of all, the choice of Egypt instead of Malaysia or Indonesia, for instance, was quite curious. Hosni Mubarak is one of the most detested despots in the Middle East, not just because he has been in power for 28 years, at the very high cost of thousands of opponents tortured, imprisoned, and killed, but more so because many Arabs and Muslims consider him to be a direct partner in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Mubarak’s government helped and continues to help enforce the embargo even against humanitarian aid to Gaza and has even prevented human rights investigators from documenting war crimes that have taken place in the territory.

Most lay Egyptians believe Mubarak is zealously serving American and Israeli interests because he is agonizingly trying to ensure that the United States will back up his son, Gamal Mubarak, an extremely unpopular, corrupt, Mafioso-type figure, in his bid to inherit the throne. The real policy disaster is that most mainstream Egyptians and, indeed, Arabs believe Obama’s choice of Egypt as the place from which to address the Muslim world is part of a classic smoke and mirrors deal to reward the ailing dictator for a job well done by guaranteeing that his son will inherit Egypt to continue more of the same.

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: As we mentioned earlier, another presidential nominee is in the spotlight this week, Sonia Sotomayor. The news of her nomination to the Supreme Court has dominated headlines, along with the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban on same-sex marriages. Joining us now to discuss those stories are Dan Gilgoff, senior writer at U.S. News & World Report, and Tod Lindberg, research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Welcome to both of you. Dan, you’ve described the nominee’s record on abortion as “inscrutable.” What do we know about her record on that particular issue?

DAN GILGOFF (Senior Writer, U.S. News & World Report): Not much. She’s ruled on a handful of cases related to abortion, but none of them directly related to Roe v. Wade. The one case that some in the pro-life community are citing as a hopeful sign for their cause is that she ruled against plaintiffs who are seeking to overturn the Mexico City policy, which bans federal funds from going to family-planning providers abroad that either endorse or promote abortion. Other than that she seems to be, you know, a black box on this issue, which is kind of fitting, because David Souter, the justice who she’s replacing, was also promised to be a conservative when George H.W. Bush appointed him to the Court in 1990, then of course voted to uphold Roe v. Wade a couple of years later. And so what’s happening this week is that some abortion rights groups are getting rather nervous. That’s kind of unexpected.

Dan Gilgoff

POTTER: Well, Tod, is this actually good news for conservatives who may have been concerned that the president would nominate a true liberal to the Court?

TOD LINDBERG (Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Washington, DC): Well, I think that it’s still very much up in the air. It’s hard to see at this point. We all know that people who are hoping to be nominated to the Supreme Court are very cautious about what they say in their private lives and in their public writings, apart from what they are doing on the bench with regard to the abortion issue. I know people who aspire to be judges who would tell you, “I would absolutely never discuss that with you” for that precise reason. You want to be opaque, because if you have a position, I mean a discernable position, then you put yourself at substantially greater political risk. It’s kind of kabuki drama in its own way, but it’s one that we’ve been playing in Washington for a long time.

POTTER: And yet Hispanic voters traditionally are sort of much more anti-abortion than the rest of, say, the Democratic electorate. Is that — does that give you any clues, that fact that she’s Hispanic?

Mr. LINDBERG: You know, you’re talking about making a conclusion based on statistical evidence, polling, etc. and applying it to a particular person. It’s just not going to work for us. We’re not going to be able to know that. The test will be once she’s confirmed, and I think everybody assumes that she will be, when the cases arrive.

POTTER: Dan, what do we know about her record on issues of religious freedom, separation of church and state — other issues that really matter to voters of faith groups?

Mr. GILGOFF: Well, we know that she has a record of siding with those who are alleging violations of their religious liberty. And I think that’s been another bright spot for conservatives. It’s interesting in that conservatives came out roundly against her as soon as her nomination was announced this week, and at the same time, I mean, in the analysis that they were releasing before Obama made his choice, she kind of received the warmest treatment. And I think some of that was because of her rulings over the religious liberty cases.

Mr. LINDBERG: I think you’d also have to draw the distinction between the conservative commentary crowd and actually the members of the Senate, who have taken a very cautious view of this. I mean they promised, the Republicans promised full scrutiny, full assessment, but certainly no one has leapt out to be an opposition figure. Certainly no one has said this nominee is unacceptable where it really matters, which is in the Senate.

POTTER: So the presumption at this point is that she will be confirmed?

Tod Lindberg

Mr. LINDBERG: I think the presumption is exactly that, in the absence of some unknown, unexpected revelation or disclosure.

POTTER: And that would leave us with six justices out of the nine being Catholics for the very first time. Is that important? Does that have significance?

Mr. GILGOFF: I think that it really speaks to the diversity ideologically of the Catholic community in this country. I mean, you talk as though, or people talk as though there’s a Catholic voting bloc, for instance. But Catholics really have voted for every winning president going back to Richard Nixon, and so it’s hard to see them — you know, they’re conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics — as a distinct bloc. But so far on the Court they’ve supplied the conservative side — the [five] Catholics are voting with the conservatives on the Court. So what I think this will do is kind of reflect more broadly the Catholic diversity that exists in the country on the Court. I also think it tells us something important about the administration politically in that they’ve taken the Catholic community very seriously. This is really a nod — Sotomayor — to the new Latino complexion of the United States. I mean, the Catholic Church is losing, you know, four Catholics for every person that’s signing up for the Church, and if it wasn’t for this huge infusion of immigration, the Church would have a real problem on its hands, and I think they’re really acknowledging that in this pick.

Mr. LINDBERG: I think the conclusion that we have to draw from this six-out-of-nine thing is that Catholic is always a plus in terms of your political calculation of who you are going to put on the Court.

POTTER: Now, let’s talk a little bit about the ruling in California that upheld a ban on same-sex marriage there.The Republicans, I gather, put out some talking points this week on Sotomayor, and one of their talking points was that she could impose a federal right to same-sex marriage. Does that have the chance of holding water, that argument, or no?

Mr. GILGOFF: I don’t think so, and I also think that the timing of this is actually very serendipitous for the White House. There was even some speculation that the White House expedited the announcement of Sotomayor to get ahead of the California Supreme Court ruling, because had the California Supreme Court struck down Proposition 8 you would have had this conservative uproar, largely directed at the Court, saying this is really the threat. The threat is that there will be Court-imposed same-sex marriage.

POTTER: Activist judges?

Mr. GILGOFF: Exactly. And so I think that the California Supreme Court ruling was really a lucky break for the Obama Administration in getting, you know, in sort of clearing a path for Sotomayor.

POTTER: What do you make of the next steps for the opponents of same-sex marriage? What do they do now? Where is their next step?

Mr. LINDBERG: Well, you know, I think there will be a continuation of initiative kind of processes. It is also interesting to look at what, you know, the next steps for the proponents are going to be. I think there’s a pretty strong indication that they do not want this matter, really, in the federal courts at this point. They would rather spend some time building up a case both politically and in terms of kind of the state court rulings that they’re able to obtain with the hope that California is more of an outlier than an indication of the trend, and take that then eventually into the federal courts. So I think, you know, conservatives will be looking to try to win in state courts where possible to show, however strongly, you know, the emotions run on this issue, that there is a principled case for defense of marriage as between a man and a woman, and that that is where most of the American people are.

POTTER: Are the statutes in the 29 states that have already banned same-sex marriage basically safe, because you’d have to go after them through some kind of referendum process, which is really hard to do?

Mr. LINDBERG: Well, safe is — no. I mean, I think if there’s ever a majority on the Supreme Court that wants to change the law on this then those statutes are precisely not safe, and I think that everybody’s aware of that and what the stakes are. But, you know, what I don’t see is a quick resolution of this issue. I think it’s one that unfolds over possibly ten years or maybe longer.

POTTER: Alright, thank you both very much. Thank you to Tod and thank you to Dan for joining us for that conversation.

Congressman DAVID PRICE (D – NC, 4th District): I would expect some thoughtful reflections about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, other world religions, the kind of values they share, the kind of dialogue that he hopes can take place among them, and also their dangers to being distorted for prideful and chauvinistic ends.

Congressman David Price (D-NC)

We may well hear some reflections on mistakes we’ve made in the Arab world, on the treatment of detainees, for example, our failure sometimes to be true to our own values in terms of dealing with autocratic regimes and human rights in the region.

We have some things that we need to let our Arab friends know that we expect. We expect a commitment to human rights and a renunciation of terrorism and violence. We expect cooperation in securing regional peace agreements — nowhere more than in Egypt, where the mediation role in the region and in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is of absolutely critical importance.

The Obama administration is in a position to reassert the American role in Middle East peacemaking as a friend, an ally of Israel and as a country absolutely committed to Israel’s security, but also as a friend to the legitimate aspiration of the Palestinians and as a champion of a two-state solution where the states can live side by side in peace and mutual security.

There’s a huge stake — an American stake, an Israeli stake, a Middle Eastern stake in Iran renunciating nuclear weapons capability, but beyond that Iran becoming a positive and constructive partner in the economic and political life of the region. The Obama administration has quite explicitly served noticed that we’re now on a different path. It’s a cautious path, a path of openness which is going to require reciprocation from the Iranian side.

President BARACK OBAMA (from speech in Turkey): Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people.

Congressman PRICE: Often we understand and need to understand in our discussions with one another that our deepest values, our commitments do have religious roots.

It brings of course a valuation of peace and peacemaking — not peace at any price but peace based on justice, and I think what also Obama understands, and this is maybe another level of understanding that one doesn’t always find, a sense of humility that also has a religious undertone, that we recognize that we’re fallible and that national causes are not to be identified in any kind of unequivocal way with God’s will.

We want our country to realize its ideals, but we also understand that our country exists in a world with other countries and other peoples and that they too are God’s children and they too have a kind of entitlement to a place on the earth and to our respect.

I think these religious traditions have power and a kind of compelling quality in their own right, and so I think we’re duly challenged to articulate what these values are and to try to live by them.

“This is a Catholic institution which is bound … to uphold the moral law.”

Archbishop RAYMOND BURKE (Former Archbishop of St. Louis, at National Catholic Prayer Breakfast): The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our president, who has been so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda, is rightly the source of the greatest scandal.

ABERNETHY: While Archbishop Burke received a standing ovation, many other Catholics noted that Notre Dame has been inviting presidents to its campus since the days of Dwight Eisenhower. Father Thomas Reese of Georgetown University says that’s part of academic freedom.

Father THOMAS REESE (Senior Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University): I don’t think it’s a scandal. Universities should be places where we have discussion, debate, where people of different views come together to argue, and when the bishops get involved in trying to censure people, ban speakers — I think it’s not helpful.

Archbishop BURKE: This is a Catholic institution which is bound by — its title is Catholic, its identity is Catholic — to uphold the moral law, and that’s the source of the scandal.

“If you ban people from your campus … it comes across as an acknowledgment that you really don’t have good arguments.”

Fr. REESE: You can’t be afraid do discuss these issues, to debate these issues. If you ban people from your campus, if you censor people, it comes across as an acknowledgment that you really don’t have good arguments that are convincing to either your students or that can win in a debate over these issues.

ABERNETHY: For his part, at a news conference last month Obama sought common ground.

President BARACK OBAMA: I believe that women should have the right to choose. But I think that the most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue is to focus on those areas that we could agree on.

ABERNETHY: Back at Notre Dame, Professor Scott Appleby saw a bright side.

Dr. SCOTT APPLEBY (History Professor, University of Notre Dame): If one result of the president coming to commencement is that there’s a vigorous public debate and discussion about the issues, well, that’s a victory really for a university.

ABERNETHY: Many of the protesters at Notre Dame were well known anti-abortion activists from around the country, but their views do not represent the opinions of most Catholics. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 50 percent of American Catholics approve of Notre Dame’s invitation; 28 percent do not.