Dobson, who took issue with Obama’s use of Bible passages to defend his public policy philosophy, was right to challenge the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, argues Pat Buchanan, founder and editor of The American Conservative and a political analyst for MSNBC, in a column featured on Focus on the Family Action’s Citizenlink.
Buchanan accused Obama of preaching a “kumbaya Christianity” where people who believe abortion is wrong are asked to push aside their beliefs in public for the sake of “ecumenical amity.”
But Christians, he said, are taught by Jesus Christ that He is the “way and the truth and the life”, and no one can go to the Father except through Him. Therefore, Christians cannot accept compromising their beliefs so that everyone can get along, he argues.
Dobson last week during his radio programme blasted Obama for his interpretation of the Bible and its application in the public square. The Focus on the Family founder based his criticisms on the senator’s June 2006 speech where Obama highlighted that while the book of Leviticus declares homosexuality an abomination, it also says eating shellfish is an abomination and condones slavery.
The senator also said Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is “a passage so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application”.
Dobson had accused Obama of “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology”.
"[H]e is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," Dobson charged. “Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the life of tiny babies?”
The central argument of Obama’s speech was: “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.”
