Friendly Atheist: Is Obama Too Pious For the Nonreligious?

For HumanistNetworkNews.org
Jan. 17, 2007

In 2004, I was able to vote in a presidential election for the first time. It was exciting because I had been following one particular candidate the entire year, and I was proud to finally be able to show my support.

It wasn't John Kerry who had me looking forward to the elections. It was Barack Obama. When I first heard about him in March 2004, he was relatively unknown, even inside Illinois' borders. But by the time he had become my state's junior senator, he was a household name.

Yesterday Obama announced he would be forming a presidential exploratory committee. He'll announce his final decision about whether or not to run for president on Feb. 10.

Obama has received some criticism from the non-religious community for remarks he has made linking the Democratic Party to the importance of faith. One prominent atheist blogger has even remarked that Obama is "too pious" to earn his vote in 2008.

The reasons for thinking this stem from a couple of speeches Obama has given in the past year. On June 28, 2006, Obama spoke at a conference hosted by Sojourners and Call to Renewal, two religious groups that have since merged into one organization. During this conference he made the following remarks:

At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word "Christian" describes one's political opponents, not people of faith… secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square… we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. Ninety percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution."

However, Obama hasn't asked the nonreligious among us to give up our beliefs or to agree with what the religious are saying. He simply asks us to understand where religious people are coming from and to not shut them out of political discussion because of their faith. Obama is, in fact, a candidate that even atheists can support.

Notice these other remarks he made at the same conference:

(Conservative leaders of the Religious Right) 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… 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 within our borders, who's Christianity would we teach in the schools? 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 O.K. 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?... 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; to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

He's walking a fine line, yes, but that's politics for you. Obama is a candidate who understands the minds of non-religious Americans better than any candidate in Washington today.

Not only that, he has the support of some of the most prominent Christian figures in the country. Pastor Rick Warren invited Obama to speak to Saddleback Church on World AIDS Day in Dec. 2006. ("Everyone was reporting on me going to church… It was like, a Democrat in church!" Obama later joked.) During that speech, Obama told the Evangelical congregation the following:

I also believe that we cannot ignore that abstinence and fidelity may too often be the ideal and not the reality… and that if condoms and potentially microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, they should be made more widely available. I know that there are those who, out of sincere religious conviction, oppose such measures. And with these folks, I must respectfully but unequivocally disagree.

In all, Obama may be a religious man, but he's on our side when it comes to the issues we care about, including church-state separation and stem cell research. "Too pious?" Hardly.

It will be some time before we see an atheist in the White House, but for many of us non-religious Americans, Obama might be the best candidate we will see for quite some time.

Hemant Mehta, a.k.a. "The Friendly Atheist", is the author of I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes, a Random House book slated to be published on April 17, 2007. Hemant is also the Chair of the Secular Student Alliance's Board of Directors. His blog is FriendlyAtheist.com.