Dobson: Obama is “dragging biblical understanding through the gutter”
posted at 11:10 pm on June 23, 2008 by Allahpundit
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Why this, why now? Probably because Obama’s evangelical outreach is just starting to gear up and Dobson wants to use his influence to blunt it before it can build up steam. Whether he’s doing that out of loyalty to the GOP, genuine concern over a pro-choice candidate peeling away Christian voters, or just the usual craving for attention, I leave to you to decide. Here’s the money section from Obama’s speech on faith two years ago:
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. 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, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.
The example he gives to make his point is Abraham preparing to kill Isaac on God’s command, as though the moral argument against abortion were no more coherent or “universal” than the voice in some zealot’s head. Dobson’s rejoinder:
Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama’s argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion’s terms but in arguments accessible to all people.
He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the “lowest common denominator of morality,” labeling it “a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”
“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” Dobson said. “What he’s trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”
That’s not what he’s trying to say. What he’s trying to say is that it’d be unfair and unconstitutional to make policy based on the ipse dixits of some religion’s God. You’re fully entitled to fight for what you believe, but if you’re going to turn it into law, you need a better justification as a legal matter than “Because God says so.” Otherwise, the only people who will understand it — not agree with it, necessarily, but understand it (i.e. who’ll find it “accessible”) — are people of your own faith. What’s obnoxious about the passage from his speech isn’t that he thinks policy needs to be based on more than a Biblical imprimatur, it’s that he’d choose abortion, of all things, as the example to illustrate his point. That’s a sly, convenient way for him to dodge the issue by implicitly reducing the pro-life position to nothing more rational than one of those holy say-so’s, something he can agree with as a God-fearing Christian but as a lawmaker in a pluralistic country is obliged to dismiss. Note to St. Barack: You don’t have to be a Christian or even a theist to find the pro-life position “accessible.” He knows that, of course, but this issue is so dicey for him with the evangelicals he’s trying to woo that he’s forced to try this feeble sleight of hand as a way of getting it off the table. Think it’ll work, when viewed in the soft glow of his Lightworker halo? Ask Doug Kmiec.
Exit question: Bizarrely, I got three separate e-mails this morning pointing to the year-old video of Obama saying America’s no longer a Christian nation. WND even wrote it up today. Were people connected to Dobson circulating that to lay the groundwork for this broadside, or has it been circulating independently for who knows what reason over the past couple of weeks and maybe that’s what inspired him to speak up now?
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But George did say this:
“Do not let any one claim to be a true American if they ever attempt to remove religion from politics”
HOOKEM1 on June 25, 2008 at 9:42 AM
J_Gocht on June 25, 2008 at 7:23 AM
Well you are wrong on both counts J_Gocht. The vast majority of people at the time of the founding of this nation were Christian, that’s a fact common knowledge fact, deal with it. In fact this country is to this very day a vast majority of Christians, something around seventy percent.
There is no separation of Church and State to be found in the U.S. Constitution. Try looking for it sometime, it is not there.
However you might be thinking of the Russian Constitution:
Maxx on June 25, 2008 at 9:51 AM
What George also said at his Farewell Address:
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
Buy Danish on June 25, 2008 at 9:54 AM
A lot of these comments have really gone off on a tangent!
But, back to the original thread, Dobson has done a great service by pointing out Obama’s hypocrisy to all those who have a rudimentary understanding of the Bible.
Obama claims that Dobson was “making things up”, but Obama made up lots of things, even about his own life–he claimed that his parents conceived him in Selma, then oops, he was four years old at the time. Obama claimed his hermit-in-the-attic uncle liberated Auschwitz, oops, it was his great-uncle who liberated Buchenwald. Obama claimed in an ad that he passed a bill for veterans, and didn’t even vote for it. Bill Clinton was right–Obama does tell fairy tales!
Obama claims to be a Christian, but he learned his “Christianity” from Jeremiah Wright, who claimed that “God d@mn America” was in the Bible. Dear voters: any REAL Christian would have quit Wright’s church after Wright’s first or second hateful sermon, and not waited 20 years! Obama’s “god” is Jeremiah Wright, and he might not be a Muslim, but he is not yet a Christian!
Obama claimed that his “faith” leads him to oppose abortion, but where was his faith when he voted against a bill in the Illinois Senate which would force a doctor to care for a newborn baby who survived an abortion attempt? What “faith” condones infanticide?
Saint James to Obama: Faith without works is dead.
Hopefully Dr. Dobson will be speaking out to make this clear to the American people before November.
Steve Z on June 25, 2008 at 10:42 AM
Someone is upset about how someone else is interpreting the Bible?
Someone thinks they know more than someone else about the Bible?
Someone claims to know exactly what some part of the Bible means?
Wow, that is amazing. That has never happened before.
Dave Rywall on June 25, 2008 at 11:01 AM
What’s the topic?
Akzed on June 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM
There was good reason the founding fathers did not invite theocrats to the Constitutional Convention.
There was even better reason not to ask ministers, priests and other dogmatic theologians of any stripe; to sign the document.
Why dear Maxx do you think that might be?
J_Gocht on June 25, 2008 at 1:48 PM
The olde Dobber just keeps it up?
J_Gocht on June 25, 2008 at 2:33 PM
Dobson is Right!
Obama is Wright!
bill30097 on June 25, 2008 at 2:38 PM
I am so tired of this “Christians, shut up and go to the back of the bus!!”
Just who the heck does this AP think he is to trash Dobson, a great conservative Christian leader? For far too long, religious conservatives have been told that we can give money and work the elections, but can’t have any say in politics.
Enough of this Back-Of-The-Bus mentality. If you aren’t willing for us to have a say in policy, you don’t need my money or labor. I’m sure some third party would like both.
A pox on your shrinking house.
pelajus on June 25, 2008 at 3:32 PM
I’m a Christian and I’m not going to the back of the bus and intend to keep pressing issues that I feel are important on our leaders. We have remained silent and timid for far too long and it’s time we speak up so that we are heard very clearly. Obama and McCain couldn’t care less what we think but in 4 years we may get a candidate that does…
sabbott on June 25, 2008 at 5:28 PM
Obama made a bigger blunder than he realizes by picking a fight with Dr. James Dobson about religion. Dr. Dobson has a huge following, and his own radio program on hundreds of Christian stations across the country. Dobson is rather neutral toward McCain, but he knows his Bible, and is also a trained psychologist, and could clean Obama’s clock in any debate about religion, since Obama’s knowledge of Christianity comes from Jeremiah Wright, which is extremely narrow-minded, to say the least.
If Obama continues down this path, Dobson could unleash a huge Evangelical backlash against Obama, swaying lots of lukewarm voters to vote against Obama, who will vote for McCain as the not-Obama candidate.
McCain could play into this by repeating his promise to appoint “strict-constructionist” judges to the Supreme Court (who could overturn Roe v. Wade), while ducking the religion issue and letting Dobson scare Christian voters toward McCain. McCain probably knows better (now) than to discuss religion during a Presidential campaign–his speech in Virginia in 2000 which dissed religious “fanatics” probably cost him the nomination that year–he won’t make THAT mistake again!
Steve Z on June 25, 2008 at 6:04 PM
Methinks the olde Dobber was the one who threw the glove?
I’m certain you’re also aware that Dobson is not an ordained theologian?
J_Gocht on June 25, 2008 at 6:32 PM
It is obvious that you don’t have to be an “ordained theologian” to know more about the Bible than Obama. You just need to have attended a church that actually teaches what’s in it.
Rose on June 25, 2008 at 7:38 PM
While you are correct that none of the signers of the Constitution were ordained ministers, I think you’re pushing your point much farther than the evidence allows.
As I’ve noted before, John Witherspoon did sign the Declaration of Independence. He was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and the president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton). A larger number of his students were influential founders, including Madison who studied closely with him.
You may also wish to look closer at 2 signers of the Constitution for their relationships to theologians of the time. Daniel Carroll was the brother of John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the U.S., and their family motto was “Strong in Faith and War.” William Samuel Johnson was the son of an influential Anglican clergyman.
If you would like to continue to argue that the founders took pains to exclude “ministers, priests and dogmatic theologians of any stripe” from signing the document, I’m afraid a little evidence may be required for a convincing argument.
cs89 on June 25, 2008 at 9:09 PM
Totally agree — I know many of the children I’ve taught at church are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay mo’ bettah at knowing - and way more importantly - living what they’ve learned.
least1 on June 25, 2008 at 9:16 PM
Yeah baby.
Christian Jihad!!!!
AprilOrit on June 25, 2008 at 10:16 PM
Hi Troll!
I’ve tried to engage your argument a few times about “life of the mother” cases on abortion, but you keep ducking and popping up with other provocative statements like this.
I’d think a “moderate Jew” would be a little careful of the “Jihad” term, but whatever.
Wanna show us a real “does mommy or baby die” example? Or are you gonna hide out for a while, then pop back up with another provocative statement when the mood strikes you?
cs89 on June 25, 2008 at 10:30 PM
You were at pains to claim you’re not a troll, and then you post nonsense like this.
I guess I missed the part where Dobson encouraged Christians to launch suicide attacks against Democrats in general or Obama in particular.
theregoestheneighborhood on June 26, 2008 at 1:31 AM
Dr. James Dobson made a bigger blunder than he realizes by picking a fight with Senator Obama…
Has he actually handed Obama certain victory in November?
Oh Oooo !
J_Gocht on June 26, 2008 at 12:31 PM
It is not necessary to know the Bible, or to quote it, as support for the life of the baby inside mother’s womb in protecting her from being put to death by intentional abortion. Nevertheless, it is irrational to suggest that someone must suppress their own moral values just because not everyone else might subscribe to those values. By that logic, no one should give a damn about rape, murder, robbery, child abuse, lying, and so on, because not everyone subscribes to those parameters, or not everyone shares the same degree of opposition to those violations of others and violations of morals.
Also, it is not necessarily a “religious” objection that people have against intentional abortion of innocent human beings during their embryonic and/or fetal development, and during their birth, as in late term, induced birth abortions. It is actually a moral objection to begin with.
Obama comes off as a spiteful, vindictive man, hiding behind a veneer of populism which has been produced by the news media, Hollywood, and the left, which comprises the predominant population of these subcultures. He, like John Kerry, employs twisted logic to justify remaining silent about abortion and not opposing it, firmly, strongly, loudly.
Like John Kerry, Obama speaks out the back of his head, issuing empty words “I personally oppose abortion, but I won’t object to anyone else supporting abortion, and I won’t object to anyone else aborting an innocent child.”
William2006 on June 26, 2008 at 1:29 PM
James spoke thusly about that…
So while James may have been a student of the goode preacher, John Witherspoon; he apparently didn’t attend all his lectures?
Damn, that unholy grog at the “Boar and Hound” on First Street! :)
J_Gocht on June 26, 2008 at 4:32 PM
My dear cs89, I have come here first for enlightenment and secondly for entertainment.
You dear madam or sir have provided bothe.
I salute you…!
BTW: Dose the number “89” in your handle “cs89” have any relationship to a significant period in your sojourn here on earth or a group to which you are or have been associated?
I certainly will not be offended if you defer.
J_Gocht on June 26, 2008 at 5:07 PM
Yours “89”…
Mine “56”…
Three score and three…
Hey “33”
“Ban Moi Bah”
OK…!
J_Gocht on June 26, 2008 at 9:10 PM
FINE BEER…!
J_Gocht on June 26, 2008 at 9:19 PM
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