April 21, 2009

Recently President Obama made a series of important speeches in Western Europe and in Turkey. He said that “the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam” and that “we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” He is right on both counts. These passages must be understood in the context of his sophisticated view of the role of religion and government.

This was demonstrated by his Inauguration and his frequent use of examples such as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. There is a bipartisan American consensus on this issue.

President Obama is following the lead of President Bush in defending religious liberty for all Americans while using his Christian principles to govern. Understanding how he can do both is vital to helping the rest of the world imitate U.S. success in securing freedom of religion without forcing religious people to privatize their faith.

Both North Korea and Iran have recently been in the news as threats to American peace and prosperity. Neither nation has achieved the constitutional compromise necessary to make a society moral and free. North Korea forces a secularist ideology on everyone and suppresses religious conscience. Extremists in Iran create religious conformity that is too pervasive and allows for too little freedom of choice to minority religious groups. President Obama is trying to be part of a long tradition of American governmental leaders balancing between the two extremes and urging other nations to do the same.

Both Bush and Obama have recommended the Islamic people follow our example, especially in unsteady but functioning democracies like Turkey. Many in the Islamic world are doing so, but not the terrorists who follow leaders such Bin Laden.

The terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11 use Islamic language to mask fascist or socialist tendencies. They take God’s will into their own hands and their cruelty shows no true submission to the will of Allah. George W. Bush argued that this demonic religion is not the religion of the hundreds of millions of Islamic people worldwide. He frequently pointed out that thousands of American Muslims are loyal Americans. President Obama agrees and adds the credibility gained from his personal experience as a Christian who has lived in a majority Islamic nation to argue that Islam can follow a better path than that taken by extremists.

President Obama argued that the members of any religion, including Islam, could be good citizens of the United States. The Christian majority has designed a system in the United States where this is possible.

American is mostly Christian without being a Christian state.

Unlike Great Britain our nation is not identified with a monarch, but a set of principles. We swear an oath to a constitution and not a Queen. Historically the monarch is Britain just as the constitution is the United States. The Queen can be Christian, but a constitution cannot be a member of a religion anymore than it can join a political party.