You can read it here.
Tim Grieve in Salon Magazine sets the stage for the speech,
“As he opened his remarks Friday at a World AIDS Day summit at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, Republican Sen. Sam Brownback said he was feeling a little more ‘comfortable’ than he did the last time he shared a stage with Barack Obama. ‘We were both addressing the NAACP,’ Brownback explained. ‘They were very polite to me ¦ [but] I think they kind of wondered, ‘Who’s this guy from Kansas?’ And then Barack Obama follows, and they’re going, ‘OK, now we’ve got Elvis.”
Figuring their joint appearance at an Orange County evangelical church finally put the shoe on the other foot, Brownback turned to Obama and said, ‘Welcome to my house.’ The audience of evangelicals howled with laughter. But when Obama had the chance to speak a few minutes later, he returned to what Brownback had said: ‘There is one thing I’ve got to say, Sam: This is my house, too. This is God’s house.’
Everyone laughed again — neither Brownback’s opening nor Obama’s comeback were offered with the rancor that a cold retelling of them probably suggests — but the point had been made anyway. In Obama’s eyes, at least, the Republican Party can no longer claim ownership of all things evangelical.
The bad news for the GOP: Rick Warren apparently agrees.”
I’ve written a bit before about Barack Obama’s approach to religion. Here I would just add that some of his themes, a recognition of the human need for “purpose,” a recognition of human limitations and a belief in human progress - all delivered in an unapologetic, non-dogmatic and engaging way - seems like a winning formula to me. It is a bit ironic that the “faith-based” presidency of George W. Bush, that has tested the faith of many, may drive more people to embrace Barack Obama’s approach to faith. Faith, like hope, is not synonymous with “failure” - it can succeed with work. As Barack Obama described “the politics of hope” in 2004:
“I™m not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don™t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That™s not what I™m talking about. I™m talking about something more substantial. It™s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker™s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.”
As he travels the country, more and more people have come to believe that “America has a place for” that “skinny kid with a funny name.” They think Barack Obama belongs in the White House. In these trying Bush years, Barack Obama has come to embody their hope for America, and Americans.
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