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Jennifer K. Berenson

Berenson is a professor of religion at Roanoke College.

The relationship between faith and politics is of great interest to people across America. While John McCain offers positions on certain issues that are amenable to religious conservatives, Barack Obama has directly addressed this question and pointed toward a solution to the growing political divisions in this country.

Obama's vision is to achieve a respectful integration of religiously motivated people into the fabric of the American political system. This fundamental change in the way religion is handled in American public life is more important to our future than a candidate's position on any particular issue.

In a speech entitled "Call to Renewal" (June 28, 2006), Obama laid out his vision of how religious conservatives and progressives can and must achieve mutual respect to solve the difficult issues facing us today. (For those still wondering about Obama's religious commitments, take the time to watch this speech at www.barackobama.com/issues/faith/.)

Obama takes both religious progressives and conservatives to task for the ways each have marginalized the other and thereby exacerbated the deepening religious chasm in this country. Democrats have ignored the conservatives or simply dismissed religion as "irrational or intolerant," while conservative leaders have fueled this division, identifying some as "true believers" and "true Americans" and others as not.

Obama has strong words for Democrats. Religion cannot, he says, be ignored as a force in public life, and Democrats "are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door." They should not deride literalist readings of the Bible; they should not expect conservatives to give up their convictions. Government policies, in fact, are not enough to secure genuine and thoroughgoing changes in American life. People need more than laws; they need, as Obama put it, "a transformation of conscience" and "changes in hearts."

While Obama does not expect conservative Christians to change their religious views, he does call upon them to change the way they have approached politics.

First, he asks conservatives to acknowledge the necessity of the separation of church and state, highlighting evangelicals' historic support for this principle.

Second, conservatives who wish to engage in politics need to develop a commitment to articulating universal values -- values that can win the day in open discussion without resort to biblical proof texting or theological foundations.

Lastly, he asks conservatives to prioritize the core moral commitments of their faith so that compromise -- without which politics cannot function -- can become a possibility.

What is clear from Obama's vision is that he refuses to reduce people of faith to caricatures, and he treats faith respectfully. Is this not precisely what all Americans of faith truly want? His patience also runs thin in just the same place as those of faith. Obama taps into broad sentiments in America when he identifies religious rhetoric that is used merely as tool to gain votes or to divide Americans as "inauthentic expressions of faith" and concludes that "people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to divide."

But since McCain espouses support for religiously conservative issues, why shouldn't conservative Christians vote for him? Because McCain has not demonstrated the same kind of respect for the religious enterprise as Obama. Let's be honest. Even thoughtful conservatives now publicly acknowledge that Sarah Palin was chosen not for her political acumen, but in a thinly veiled attempt to re-energize McCain's campaign by portraying his ticket as supportive of conservative Christian values. And let's not forget David Kuo ("Tempting Faith," 2006), who exposed the way senior Bush advisers privately ridiculed evangelicals while courting their votes.

It's time for all of us to just say no to this kind of disingenuous politics.

So conservatives have a choice: to be satisfied with a token gesture toward the religious right or to opt for a president who will genuinely welcome you as a person of faith to the political table and will not dismiss you when convenient. If I were a conservative Christian -- and I once was -- I would take the latter option in a heartbeat, since transforming the way in which religion functions in the public sphere opens the door to new possibilities for the future, while "winning" on one or two issues only perpetuates the public manipulation of religion.

Obama has offered a thoughtful, honest and respectful vision of how faith and politics can productively intersect. He challenges us to reject the use of religion to divide us from our neighbors and appeals to us to embrace a future in which religious faith and faithful people can emerge from the margins and contribute to public life in an atmosphere of mutual respect. I, for one, am up for that challenge.