Soon after the 2012 election a Perspectives editor asked me to write about the diminished role overt faith had in presidential campaign discourse. He thought I shared his disappointment in the Obama campaign\u2019s reluctance to use Christian rhetoric and (his description) \u201calmost total disregard for the Christian community.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/i> Soon after the 2012 election a Perspectives editor asked me to write about the diminished role overt faith had in presidential campaign discourse. He thought I shared his disappointment in the Obama campaign\u2019s reluctance to use Christian rhetoric and (his description) \u201calmost total disregard for the Christian community.\u201d \u00a0So writes Douglas Koopman of Calvin College, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
<\/span>So writes Douglas Koopman of Calvin College, in his A Great President\u2019s Second Inaugural Address, an \u201cAs We See It\u201d in the current issue of Perspectives. And I am the aforementioned Perspectives editor. It\u2019s July, typically a slow season for politics. Wildfires, heat waves, and the All-Star game usually make up the headlines. The Supreme Court horned in last week. Nonetheless, with Koopman\u2019s help, I want to talk about Obama, faith talk, and religious rhetoric. Koopman continues,\u00a0<\/span>
<\/span>Turning down the request, I offered a contrary view that the diminished \u201cGod talk\u201d of the Obama and Romney campaigns might be good. The limited religious rhetoric was consistent with the two major party candidates\u2019 apparently sincere but private faiths. These private faiths seemed to have no independent influence on their policy positions, as all their views were comfortably in the mainstream of their respective parties. It seemed refreshing that neither Obama nor Romney used God talk as a strategy to \u201chumanize\u201d the candidate and appeal to swing voters\u2014the usual ways it is deployed in campaigns.<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>
<\/span>I don\u2019t know Koopman personally. He\u2019s done some good work for Perspectives, a thoughtful Christian with a measured center-right political voice\u2014an endangered species these days. My aim here is not to counter his piece, but rather to try to articulate what I meant by my \u201cdisappointment in the Obama campaign\u2019s reluctance to use Christian rhetoric and almost total disregard for the Christian community.\u201d For me, more than drones, more than collecting phone records, this is my biggest disappointment in Obama and his administration.<\/span>
<\/span>Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"