Obama says Democrats must court evangelicals

Democratic senator and rising star Barack Obama, seen here in April 2006, is being urged by some party elders to run for US president in 2008, in a bid to help end years of Republican control of the White House.(AFP/File/Paul J. Richards)

I found this off Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty.

"It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase `under God,'" he said. "Having voluntary student prayer groups using school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats."

Obama, the only black in the Senate, drew national notice even before arriving in Congress last year, and has occasionally used his visibility to scold members of his own party. Widely sought as a fundraiser for other Democrats, Obama responded with a noncommittal laugh this spring when asked whether he wants a spot on the national ticket in 2008.

In one sense, Obama is right that the Democratic Party needs to bring back religion back into the party. The question here is how do you balance religious faith with the desire to maintain a secular government? This has always been a problem for the Democratic Party, and the party has been eliminating anything that even hints of religion cracking their wall of separation of church and state. The result of this has been a tainting of the Democratic Party as a party of atheists, godless liberals, or even Satanic devil-worshippers, while providing an opening for the Republicans to court the evangelicals with their own extremist social wedge ideologies of school prayer, intelligent design, and gay discrimination.

The Democrats need to change their views on religion. They need to acknowledge that America is a religious nation--that religion does play an important part of an American's life. The Democrats need to acknowledge that religion will also play a role in government--it's okay to recite the Pledge of allegiance with the words "under God," or that religious groups can use public school property--as long as they follow the same rules as other groups and clubs. I'm not saying that the Democrats should cave in to everything regarding religion in order to court the evangelical base, but rather to allow some balance of religion within American's daily lives, so as long as one set of religious beliefs do not supersede all other religious beliefs. In other words, ignore the frivolous stuff for that will play into the Republican charges that the Democrats are a "Godless" party.

But there is more here regarding religion. Currently, the Republican Party has gained a lock on the religious vote by pushing instilling fear among religious Americans that the "Godless" Democrats will outlaw religious worship in the U.S. You can see this with their social wedge issues--gay marriage, intelligent design, and school prayer. And so far, the Democrats are responding to religion on the Republican terms, using the issues of gay marriage, intelligent design, and school prayer that the Republicans have defined. The Democrats cannot win this debate as defined by the Republicans, using the Republican rules. Instead, the Democrats have got to define their own set of religious issues, and attack the Republicans using their own rules. One powerful religious issue that the Democrats can use is the issue of poverty, and the Christian desire to help the poor. This issue can certainly play into the greatest weakness of the Republican Party--that of class warfare, and the Republicans self-serving interest of benefiting their rich elites and corporate benefactors, over that of ordinary Americans. There are other issues that the Democrats can tie religion into--health care, the environment, education--not the intelligent design or creationism stuff that the Republicans love to tout, but rather providing solutions to improve the public education system. Anything that helps improve ordinary American's daily lives, and allows them to fulfill their greater potential can be adapted to sell to Americans as religious values. The Democrats may not be able to court the extreme religious wackos, but they should be able to bring moderate Christians back into the party, while stripping the Republican lock on this voting group.