Objecting to Obama

It appears that some evangelicals don’t like the idea of Barack Obama speaking at a church. He’s been invited by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church to speak at a conference on AIDS. The reason? He supports abortion rights. (See the story on MSNBC.com.)

I wanted to call attention to this on two levels. First is the desire of some Christians (and note “some,” not all or even most) to close down lines of communication and listen only to those people who agree with them. It is not unlikely that many of the people who listen will disagree with much of what Obama believes, not only on abortion, but also on many other issues. Any issues of partisanship should be put to rest by the invitation to Senator Brownback of Kansas, not precisely one of my favorite people, but quite correct on this particular issue. Those who protest simply hearing from someone they disagree with do not do Christianity any favors.

There are a number of reasons why I am looking favorably at Barack Obama myself. Obviously as an independent who stays out of the primary process, I am nowhere near becoming committed to a candidate, but he has taken some interesting steps. One very positive thing, I believe, is that he is encouraging liberals to talk about their faith. There are a lot of people of faith who are liberal, but their existence is often obscured by some of the noisier folks.

I’m also mildly annoyed that we have this lengthy story about the fact that Senator Obama will speak at this event, but that is the sole topic of the coverage. It’s amazing to me what simply announcing candidacy can do to make one newsworthy. The material to be debated at the conference and the fact of the conference itself are substantially less newsworthy than is the participation of one particular politician.

I guess we’ll need to get used to this kind of coverage over the next couple of years. Journalists have very little feel for substance and so focus on ever minor issue and speech. Journalists are at least as much to blame as political operatives in lowering the level of public debate.

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