Compassion summit
CNN aired that special last evening, featuring the views and thoughts of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on matters of faith and politics.
It was a risk-filled journey for both: social issues like abortion and gay marriage have long been sticking points for Democrats in their efforts to reach some religious voters.
But in separate appearances at Faith in Public Life’s Compassion Forum at Messiah College — only the second such event in Democratic presidential campaign history — both spoke of their faith in starkly personal terms.
On a day when her campaign released a new ad talking about her struggles to “climb the mountain,” Clinton told CNN’s Campbell Brown and Newsweek’s Jon Meacham. “I don’t think that I could have made my life’s journey without being anchored in God’s grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love…”
Obama said that to him, “religion is a bulwark, a foundation when other things aren’t going well. That’s true in my own life, through trials and tribulations. …”
Obama later added: “I am a devout Christian … I started my work working with churches in the shadow of steel plants that had closed on the south side of Chicago …”
This used to be an area Democrats avoided. Until the 2004 elections, when they discovered the ‘God gap’ and strategized to close it. Now, they’re talking about it more than the Republicans.
So on Sunday, in front of a religious crowd, both candidates worked their way carefully through the rhetorical minefield that still surrounds the issue.
Rhetorical minefield because rhetoric has buried in the cultural landscape eupemisms that replace the clear language of human life and natural law. What’s politically correct has trumped what’s morally correct on a number of levels.
So, how does their Christian beliefs square with, say, their abortion support?
Clinton, asked whether she believed life begins at conception, replied that “the potential for life begins at conception,” adding that the Methodist church, her denomination, had “struggled with this issue.”
That’s evasive maneuvering.
“…And as some of you’ve heard me discuss before, I think abortion should remain legal — but it needs to be safe and rare,” she said.
So continue the conversation. Why should it be made rare? What makes it undesirable enough that it should be made rare? This squirmyt position is what’s disguised culturally as compassion.
Obama — who had sparked controversy several weeks ago when he said he would not want to see his daughters “burdened” with an unwanted child — said it was important to “acknowledge that there is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tap down.”
Follow up question: Why?