Because Jesus Wasn’t Kidding About Loving Your Neighbor
Obama won because Republican values are just anathema to most Americans. But he also won because voters knew Obama understood them and would put them first…they trusted him to figure out the best course forward for our country and do what was right for their families. Here’s why:
If you’re Romney right now, you’ve got to be cursing your luck. You’re in a neck-and-neck race the week before the election…and then wham: another “Act of God” throws all your plans out the window. It’s almost enough to let you empathize with those “takers” (as your running mate would call them) who lost everything in this storm…almost.
Our nation has always been well-served when people of faith carry their convictions with them into the public square for the common good. For President Obama, civic engagement – one motivated not by a pursuit of power, but by the values we hold as beneficial for individuals, family and society – is more than a call for citizenship. It’s a requirement of a fully-lived faith.
Voting these days is an act of faith. We take the time to go to a polling station and cast a ballot even though we know our vote won’t affect the outcome of the election. And even if it did, our political system is so broken that fundamental change often seems unlikely anyway. We Americans [...]
without Jesus this progressive narrative can become self-defeating because it perpetuates the argument that we should judge people based on the value of their work and not their value as the image of Christ. An appeal to fairness is a good argument to make in a pluralistic or secular setting. It’s a good standard for determining public policy, and it’ll win elections. But for Christians it can be the be-all-and-end-all.
Romney wanted to show he wasn’t heartless–that he was one of us and understood kids–by saying he loved Big Bird. But the fact that he made that statement at the same time that he said he planned to cut all funding to PBS and the programs that allow Big Bird to exist communicated the complete opposite. in an effort to show he was human, he’s smiled as he’s said he’d end Big Bird. And it matters because Romney’s biggest liability is that he can’t relate. Voters don’t trust him or believe he will care about them.
Wondering how to talk about last night’s debate? We’ve already had some great discussion about it over on FD’s facebook wall. Message Matters has also now put out these great talking point. FD’s own Eric Sapp (@SappEric) is one of the lead editors on this daily messaging memo. Debate Debrief: Romney vs. The Truth We [...]
Fannie Lou Hamer led the Mississippi Freedom Democrats. She was impoverished, a sharecropper with hands calloused from the back-breaking work of hand-picking cotton. She couldn’t read. And she had lived a life with no say about her own choices. Speaking before the DNC credentials committee, Hamer proclaimed “Is this America?”
The Ryan-Romney budget and Republican campaign talking points are based on an appeal to wealth and using wealth as a proxy for a person’s worth and value. Plenty of secular and economic arguments can be made for those appeals, but one cannot make a Biblical argument for those values.
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