urbanmennonite.com

What is James Dobson thinking?   I know he’s super-conservative, anti-gay,  anti-woman, anti-everything really (under the guise of pro-family, of course). But he wasn’t some raving crazy lunatic like Jerry Falwell or the end-times-are-a-coming-throw-the-gays-overboard like Pat Robertson, right?.  At least he gave the impression of being … I don’t know … temperate.  Maybe I was easily fooled by the legitimate Dr. in front of his name. I mean, how many of us raised in Mennonite homes in the 80s got our sex education from him? You remember the book.  I know you do.  It told you that masturbation wasn’t a sin.

But his attack against Obama is just insane.

Dobson stated that a speech Obama gave to a 2006 Call To Renewal conference (that’s a Jim Wallis production) gives a “fruitcake” interpretation of the Constitution and says personal morality has no place in politics.

Uhm no.

Did he actually read the thing?  It’s not like I listen to speeches for a living or anything but that speech …. damn, that’s a good speech.

I may not agree with all of it, being incredibly uncomfortable with religion in political life. I’d be fine if it were a requirement that all politicians be agnostic.  Or Unitarians.

Regardless, this is a killer speech and maybe one that every Mennonite pastor I know should read from the pulpit sometime this year.

Obama spends some time talking about how he, from a pretty non-religious background, ended up at church.  And he’s clear that it isn’t about some Damascus Road conversion:

Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts. You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it.

It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. …

That’s a path that has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans - evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at certain turning points in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives their beliefs and their values.

And that is why that, if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at - to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own - then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

He touches on the inherency of religion in the American political psyche — which some (count me in!) may greatly dislike being all fond of that church-state separation thing — and calls progressives to acknowledge that reality:

… the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of “thou” and not just “I,” resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.

And then (and I think this is the part that Dobson is pissed off about) he calls conservatives to task.

For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. …

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. …

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.

And in true Obama fashion, he even throws in a couple of kick-ass statements:

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?

And who is this supposed to help?  McCain?  Girlfriend, please.

Dobson has already admitted his problems with McCain and McCain is surely not seeing this as helpful.  It drives away the moderates and makes the Republicans look even crazier and less mainstream than they already are.  Is Dobson hoping to play kingmaker by proving that the Republicans can’t win without him and his followers?  Because nothing is going to help the Republicans in this election. Is it benefiting Dobson?  Is he preparing himself for some run at a political office? Is it fear?  Did Ted Haggard make a pass?

Who know who this helps?  Obama.

I actually think this whole rant, this whole argument is the dying gasp of a man who knows his time — his attitude, his approach to the world, his approach to faith, his branch of a particular political party, his whole life — is going to end up just a weird crazy footnote in American history.  At least until all those Patrick Henry graduates start to run for office.