Proud Christian, Barack Obama

In a CNN debate (January 21) in South Carolina Barack Obama declared: "I am a proud Christian. There have been times times where our Democratic Party did not reach out as aggressively as we could to evangelicals, for example, because the assumption was, well, they don't agree with us on choice, or they don't agree with us on gay rights, and so we just shouldn't show up. And when you don't show up, if you're not going to church, then you're not talking to church folk. And that means that people have a very right-wing perspective in terms of what faith means and of defining our faith. And as somebody who believes deeply in the precepts of Jesus Christ, particularly treating the least of these in a way that he would, that it is important for us to not concede that ground. Because I think we can go after those folks and get them."

In my estimation, after reading these words a number of times, Obama is not only declaring he's a Christian, dedicated to the precepts of Jesus Christ, he also wants to 1) seek the Evangelical vote, while 2) engaging the Evangelicals in, at least, a tacit conversation about Christian values and beliefs, hoping to win them over and perhaps bending them toward a more liberal interpretation of those values and beliefs. I'd like to see this tacit conversation become explicit as we move through the primaries toward the November elections. At the very least, such a conversation would highlight that Christians of good conscience have a variety of outlooks.