A friend sent me some links that I would like to pass on to you. James Dobson recently took issue with Obama’s foray into scriptural hermeneutics and cultural applications. You can read about that here. The passage in Obama’s speech that Dobson no like is here. And the full Obama speech is here.
The problem is that Obama is singing a song that many conservative evangelicals also sing, all while trying to bring their faith into the public square. Given the widely shared premises, Obama has a good point. In my view, it is an unanswerable point. My faith can motivate me to get involved, but once I am in the middle of debate, no fair quoting Moses or Jesus directly (as though they had any authority here in America). Faith-motivated political involvement has to be run through a reduction valve, enabling us to make an appeal that anybody could in principle sign off on.
Of course, this rigs the system in favor of every form of unbelief. The atheist has veto power over everything because he “just can’t see it.” Moreover, taking a cue from Christopher Hitchens, he won’t see it.
Part of the difficulty is that we are so confused anymore that we don’t understand the differences between sectarian groups (Presbyterian and Baptist) and religions (Islam and Hinduism). In the founding of America, no sect was permitted to become the establishment, but the truth of the Christian faith was everywhere presupposed.
But unlike the founders, we no longer understand that a unified culture and society are impossible apart from a shared religious consensus. In America, that consensus was once Christian and it is now Cash — and no, not Johnny. Our new secular consensus insists that all the other religions be treated as mere sects in the great city governed by the sky god Mammon and his many-breasted consort, Compound Interest.
Every time Christians get a little too close to the center of the public square for comfort, as Dobson frequently does (and good for him), this argument is going to be trotted out. We need to deal with it. We need to answer it. This is a great big honking reductio that we need to swallow. If we have trouble getting it down in one gulp, perhaps we can borrow a steak knife from Rushdoony or somebody. He was a bit of a crank, but he did know how to make steak knives.
So here it is. All attempts by Christians to influence public policy must be conducted in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Holy Ghost, and to the greater glory of God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. When we take our light into the dark public square in order to shine it there, what sense does it make to take our bushel basket along with us?
Obama spoke as though we want to make America a Christian nation by exiling non-Christians, which is nonsense. We are not going to do this thing by banishing non-Christians. We are going to do this by baptizing them, and we want to follow that up by teaching them to obey everything that Christ commanded. We do this because all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. We are Christians, and so we believe that. Don’t we?