Re-Match: Dobson vs Obama

Following up on yesterday’s post, I located Obama’s speech and read it. I also listened to Dobson’s program where the talks about Obama’s speech (Thanks Philip for find that for me!).  

The end result: I think Dobson is missing the mark on this one.

Here are my thoughts (feel free to post comments or email your thought to me. I LOVE discussions.)

---

The first thing Dobson said when he started talking about Obama’s speech was that he was “under fire” from Obama. Now I read the entire speech and Obama only mention Dobson once (and it was a long speech). Here is the one reference:

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's?

On his program, Dobson stated that he is upset because he felt that Obama was equating him to Al Sharpton, who Dobson dislikes. In reading the speech, it seemed to me that Obama was using a figure of speech to describe two opposite positions. It’s not that the positions are necessary equal to each other, but that they are opposite. Similar to saying “dark and light” or “good and bad”.

Personally, I think Dobson should be happy Obama used his name in this way as it shows that Dobson’s views are in contrast with Sharpton’s views.[@more@]

---

The other big issue Dobson had with Obama’s speech was about the Bible. In Dobson’s view, Obama is “distorting” the Bible. After reading the entire speech, I must say that Dobson is grasping at straws here. Here is the quote that Dobson is so fired up about:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Levitacus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage so radical that it’s doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application?

To fully understand what Obama is saying, we must go back a bit and see the context in which this quote is being said:

Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn't want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

To keep this post for getting too long, let’s up down a few paragraphs and pick up the speech again:

Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion.

This goes for both sides.

Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages – the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ's divinity – are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.

The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.

Do you see what Obama is saying? He not “distorting” the Bible so to speak. What he is doing is bring up the very real fact that not all Christians interpret the Bible the same way. That is why we have various Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical churches.

As such, before we can make public policies based upon the Christian faith, we have to decide on which Christian tradition and interpretation to follow. Of course, the obvious answer is that this isn’t going to happen (well, at least not by human strengthen). Therefore, when we enter the public realm and start promoting certain laws or policies, we need to remember that these rules will be governing people of all various Christian traditions as well as other religions.

---

Remember that part of the speech I skipped? Where lets go back to it as it deals with this issue:

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It's the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

I think Obama does a good job of describing the difficulty a Believer has in balancing God’s Word with the laws of the land. Yeah, I don’t like his example of abortion as I see that as murder and, being murder, as one of the things the government should stop. However, there are other examples that could just as easily be used.

Gay marriage is one. The Bible tells us that homosexuality is wrong. That is a fact. Now, how should I, as a believer, translate this fact into public policy that affects people who do not believe this fact? Should I force by belief that homosexuality is wrong on every single person in the nation? Or should I advocate a middle ground where everyone can practice their beliefs without government control?

Or how about helping the poor and homeless? The Bible says we are to help them. That is pretty much understood across all Christian traditions. But how? Do we give tax breaks to corporations so they can spend more money and make new jobs? Or should be tax the corporations and wealthy Americans and use the funds to provide social services?

---

You see, things are not always black and white. There is a lot of gray area out there. I believe we as Christian Americans need to be very, very careful about getting caught up in one political mindset or one particular Bible interpretation. We have to remember that God is bigger then the structures we humans have developed. 

Note: this is not to say that there aren’t certain universal truths in the Bible. It’s just that there are also a lot of areas left up to the individual believer. We need to be praying for the Lord to help know the difference between the two.

I apologize for such a long post (my wife says I’ve been writing essays lately). There was just a lot of information to cover…  Please post your comments or email them to me. I’m open to different view points and interpretations.  The Lord knows that I’m still trying to figure out this thing they call life.