Obama identifies something that few at his level in the Democrat party will publicly state about our history, about personal morality, and about the definition of law.it's wrong to ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square. Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Martin Luther King Jr. — indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history — were not only motivated by faith, they also used religious language to argue for their cause. To say men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality.
While this is true, Obama makes another pertinent observation along with an example:
... 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.
If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Obama touches on a very important principle in the first part of his assessment but his example of application fails to heed his own implications. Universal values depend on certain absolutes being in place to which we are all subject regardless of whether everyone holds to those values or not.
Martin Luther King recognized this in the fight for civil rights. He unashamedly pointed to the objective standard of the value and dignity of man (regardless of skin). This standard King reminded us existed not because any human being recognized it but because "Our Hebraic-Christian tradition refers to this inherent dignity of man in the Biblical term image of God."
King then went on to say:
This idea of the dignity and worth of human personality is expressed eloquently and unequivocably in the Declaration of Independence. "All men,” it says, "are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Never has a sociopolitical document proclaimed more profoundly and eloquently the sacredness of human personality. ["The Ethical Demands For Integration"]
King's and the Founder's biblical worldview adhered to a "universal" (i.e. objective) truth regardless of what other's - religious or not - held. This is the point that must be true for Obama's foundational premise to be valid. If there is a God who created all of us and the world in which we live then there is a design to that creation; certain truths that exist even if not one human being recognizes or adheres to those truths.
This is why King's civil rights movement made progress. It recognized a truth about the way the world is designed and appealed to it even to the point of using religious language because the only way the truth makes sense is by pointing back to God.
King knew that it is the God of the Hebraic-Christian tradition which gives us value. Not the color of our skin, not our ethnicity, and not whether we are inside or outside the womb.
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