Christian conservative gives Obama high marks on faith speech

<The headlines from Barack Obama’s faith speech this weekend centered on how he ripped leaders of the religious right. We’ll get to that in a moment. But this speech was a lot more than just that.

Let’s first start with this. Besides Obama, how many times have you seen a presidential candidate get up in front of a large crowd and talk in depth about his salvation? I’ll give you the answer: Zero. For Obama to stand up and talk about how Jesus changed his life, my friends that takes guts. You may disagree with everything he’s about, you may disagree with his policy goals but as Christians, shouldn’t we like it when someone talks about Christ being the missing ingredient in his life?...>

<Barack Obama wants to bring the country together as best he can on this issue of faith and politics. His heart is in the right place. To “call out” leaders of the Christian Right like that seemed a little too broad for my taste. (watch those comments here )He blanketed a lot of people with one broad brush. If you really look closely at those leaders of the Christian Right, it doesn’t seem fair to pigeonhole all of them in the same category and to say all they care about are abortion, gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design. These leaders have spoken out and taken action on issues like the genocide in Darfur, poverty in America, torture techniques, helping people after devastating natural disasters, etc. Do they focus on abortion and gay marriage more than progressives? Yes but is that such a crime to believe that God would be against it?

To me though, the criticism of the religious right was a small part of the speech. I saw it more as an uplifting speech that can bring people of faith together...>

<Here’s what it comes down to. Obama’s view of his faith calls for social justice. Moral issues like immigration, minimum wage, healthcare, etc are all part of that equation. (watch more on that here) Social conservatives see the pressing moral issues as abortion, gay marriage, etc. So how can you bring both sides together? Maybe you can’t. But if religious conservatives are willing to engage in some of these other “moral issues” that Obama talks about, then Obama and the progressives might also need to be willing to engage on the abortion and gay marriage issue. For example, nobody expects Obama to all of a sudden become pro-life, but will he be able to move towards the middle on issues like parental notification or a congressional bill that warns would be mothers that their fetus will feel pain if aborted after 20 weeks?>

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/183357.aspx

What would take guts would be for a presidential candidate to proclaim his lack of belief. And that's a sad commentary on the state of America -- along with the fact that such a proclamation would destroy his candidacy.

but coming out and saying you don't believe would take even more guts.

religion plays a role in his life. I don't know if anyone noticed but, faith plays a big role in the African American community. And that is where the great protests came from.

Im just saying it would take even more guts for an atheist to call out the evangelicals IMO.

:shrug:

You get the "Bestest DU'er of the Day" award for complementing a candidate who isn't even your top pick!

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Do you know how RARE that is on here this time of the year?

If we all did that a little bit more, this place would be...

-- a lot less of this:

-- and a whole lot more of this:

I criticize other candidates, as do others, but all of our candidates bring strengths to the table that should be acknowledged imo.

from formerly unattainable territory