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Opinion: Obama, Clinton and religion

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The continuing effort by many Democrats to more publicly discuss their religious faith and how it infuses their politics is highlighted by a new e-mail exchange between Christian Broadcast Network reporter David Brody and Barack Obama. The communication includes the presidential candidate discussing his recent comment that, ‘Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us.’

Brody, in e-mail questions he submitted to Obama’s campaign a few weeks back, noted that some evangelicals were ‘taken aback’ by the remark and asked Obama to expand on it. Obama, in answers Brody posted on his website Sunday, replied that his goal was to ‘contrast the heated partisan rhetoric of a distinct minority of Christian leaders with the vast majority of Evangelical Christians --- conservatives included --- who believe that hate has no place in our politics.’

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Obama also elaborates, to a degree that had been rare within Democratic circles, on what he describes as ‘the role that values and culture play in addressing’ social problems.

For instance, after reiterating his support for ‘keeping guns out of the inner cities’ --- and the need to fight the firearms’ lobby on this issue --- he goes on to say that, ‘I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we’ve got a moral problem. There’s a hole in that young man’s heart --- a hole that the government alone cannot fix.’

Today, Brody offered his reflections on Obama’s responses, as well as ...

some general observations about his prospects for attracting evangelical support. Brody writes: ‘What has been refreshing about Obama is that he doesn’t shy away from bringing up the name ‘Jesus.’ ‘

But Brody also spotlights Obama’s comment, in one of his posted answers, that, ‘Whatever we once were, we’re 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 non-believers.’ Policy-makers, Obama said, need to account for that diversity.

Brody, who was profiled by The Times’ Stephanie Simon earlier this year, opines that the ‘just a Christian nation’ line is ‘not going to sit well with fundamentalists.’

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Another posting worth checking out on Brody’s site today is headlined, ‘Hillary Clinton’s Faith Based Talking Points’; it begins: ‘When it comes to the faith and values debate in this country, Republicans beware. Democrats are hunting in your backyard.’

The item quotes Burns Strider, the director of faith based operations for Clinton, as saying his office ‘is at the table every morning, fully integrated into the campaign.’

Brody also quotes from a six-page memo he said he obtained from Clinton aides, a document that is distributed as ‘talking points’ for supporters. It includes this offering: ‘The teachings of her faith, the principles of the Methodist church, and the examples of her family have been the guiding light throughout her life... .’

That may well be but, based on a close reading of Sunday’s New York Times story relating excerpts from letters she sent during her college years to a childhood friend, she may have experienced at least one crisis of faith.

Toward the end of the lengthy story, that prospect is raised by a portion of a letter she penned early in her junior year at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She wrote: “Last week I decided that even if life is absurd why couldn’t I spend it absurdly happy?” According to the Times article, she challenges herself to “define ‘happiness’ Hillary Rodham, acknowledged agnostic intellectual liberal, emotional conservative.”

We checked Webster’s, just to be sure, and agnostic is defined as: ‘a person who believes that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God or an ultimate cause, or anything beyond material phenomena.’

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-- Don Frederick

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