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{"id":1884,"date":"2012-09-06T15:42:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T15:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/09\/president-obamas-faith-challenge-at-the-democratic-convention.html"},"modified":"2012-09-06T15:42:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T15:42:00","slug":"president-obamas-faith-challenge-at-the-democratic-convention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/09\/president-obamas-faith-challenge-at-the-democratic-convention.html","title":{"rendered":"President Obama\u2019s faith challenge at the Democratic convention"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last week, former Mass. governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Convention largely embraced Romney\u2019s Mormon faith<\/a>, following a well-worn civil religion approach that made general references to God and faith while avoiding the potentially controversial specifics of Mormon theology<\/a> that clash with his evangelical voter base. This week, as President Obama takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention, he faces a different, but also serious, challenge about how to address his faith while he makes his case for another four years as president.<\/p>\n

Like Romney, Obama has faced some challenges on the faith front. As Daniel Cox and I noted in a recent chapter on Obama\u2019s faith in \u201cReligion and the American Presidency,\u201d Obama made his entrance to the national stage with a speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention that was full of religious language, such as traditional biblical allusions (\u201cIt is that fundamental belief \u2014 I am my brother\u2019s keeper, I am my sisters\u2019 keeper \u2014 that makes this country work\u201d) and references to contemporary Christian music (\u201cwe worship an awesome God in the blue states\u201d). This speech was also remarkable because it broke through at a time when the \u201cvalues voters\u201d movement was on the rise and Democrats were being lambasted for being perceived as unfriendly to religion.
Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"