Barack Obama is promising Americans another faith-based presidency but asking us to trust him not to pervert it, as George W. Bush did, “to promote partisan interests.”
That may take a leap of faith on the part of those drawn to Obama’s new politics as an antidote to eight years of seeing Bush-Rove, to use a JFK era phrase, “pour God over everything like ketchup.”
In his speech this week, Obama was tightrope-walking between his understanding of church-state separation, “as someone who used to teach constitutional law,” and the yearnings of those “bitter” Americans who “cling to religion” as a result of their frustrations.
Declaring that “the challenges we face today–from saving our planet to ending poverty–are simply too big for government to solve alone,” Obama on-the-other-handed, “I’m not saying that faith-based groups are an alternative to government or secular nonprofits. And I’m not saying that they’re somehow better at lifting people up. ”