Obama, Faith Talk, and Religious Rhetoric

Soon after the 2012 election a Perspectives editor asked me to write about the diminished role overt faith had in presidential campaign discourse. He thought I shared his disappointment in the Obama campaign’s reluctance to use Christian rhetoric and (his description) “almost total disregard for the Christian community.”  

So writes Douglas Koopman of Calvin College, in his A Great President’s Second Inaugural Address, an “As We See It” in the current issue of Perspectives. And I am the aforementioned Perspectives editor. It’s July, typically a slow season for politics. Wildfires, heat waves, and the All-Star game usually make up the headlines. The Supreme Court horned in last week. Nonetheless, with Koopman’s help, I want to talk about Obama, faith talk, and religious rhetoric. Koopman continues, 

Turning down the request, I offered a contrary view that the diminished “God talk” of the Obama and Romney campaigns might be good. The limited religious rhetoric was consistent with the two major party candidates’ apparently sincere but private faiths. These private faiths seemed to have no independent influence on their policy positions, as all their views were comfortably in the mainstream of their respective parties. It seemed refreshing that neither Obama nor Romney used God talk as a strategy to “humanize” the candidate and appeal to swing voters—the usual ways it is deployed in campaigns. 

I don’t know Koopman personally. He’s done some good work for Perspectives, a thoughtful Christian with a measured center-right political voice—an endangered species these days. My aim here is not to counter his piece, but rather to try to articulate what I meant by my “disappointment in the Obama campaign’s reluctance to use Christian rhetoric and almost total disregard for the Christian community.” For me, more than drones, more than collecting phone records, this is my biggest disappointment in Obama and his administration.

Read the rest here