Christ First Forum

Obama is 'ramping up his God talk'

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

President Obama is "ramping up his 'God talk' for the re-election campaign," says political scientist John Green, director of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

But Green and two other experts who track religious rhetoric in presidential politics speculate this strategy to connect with evangelical voters may not work for Obama.

Green points out,

Obama didn't talk much about faith during his first two years in office and this has left 40% of Americans wondering just what, exactly, is his faith commitment. Now he is ramping up this kind of language and using it in the right kind of context.

Most recent examples: On Sunday, Obama recited Psalm 46 at the 9/11 memorial event in New York and quoted Psalm 30 that same night at a memorial concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington. In his televised national jobs bill speech, he declared,

We are one nation under God, we always have been and always will be.

These kinds of God mentions won't move the dial for conservative evangelicals but, Green says, they could be just right for ambivalent voters who "don't want a hard-edged faith shaping national politics."

David Domke, professor of communications at University of Washington, who tracks all religious references in candidates' speeches, said Obama's recent ways of raising God's name are big steps up from his routine "God Bless America" speech sign-off.

Domke calls this

a technique for making 'Christian' and 'American' synonymous. He's making a claim about the nation. There's no avoiding that this is a strategic emphasis on his part. He didn't speak this way when he was at 60% public approval.

However, Obama generally doesn't use secular events to speak about how he came to Jesus, the core Christian testimony, says Domke, co-author of The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. It examined the God language of the four preceding presidents.

This is very different than Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who gave his personal Christian conversion testimony as part of a foreign policy speech Wednesday.


Perry speaking at Liberty University, the evangelical college founded by the late Jerry Falwell, staked the Christian claim for himself and for the USA.

According to the Associated Press, Perry said,

America is going to be guided by some set of values. The question is gonna be whose values? It's those Christian values that this country was based upon.

Voters think Perry is sincere. Whether they agree or they are terrified by his rhetoric, they think he means it. But, says Domke, when Obama -- the first multi-cultural, multi-racial president and the only one to mention unbelievers in his inaugural address -- speaks of God, in any setting, his authenticity is suspect.

Forget that he stepped onto the podium in Springfield, Ill., in 2007 to announce his candidacy for the presidential race after a Gospel choir sang and that his opening words gave glory to God. Forget that he's spoken of his personal salvation in churches and prayer breakfasts, Domke says.

For a Republican, you need a prayer rally. For a Democrat, you just need an opening prayer and more than that makes liberals nervous.

Questioning someone's religious sincerity is totally a factor of whether you already like that person. Baylor University sociologist Paul Froese says,

If Obama held a prayer rally, it would never work. People who don't like him won't believe him.

Froese, co-author of America's Four Gods: What we say about God and what that says about us, says his book's comment is true today:

Rather than debate policy, we debate the morality of individuals. And if their image of God does not match our own, we conclude that they are either godless or fanatical.

DO YOU THINK ... Perry and Obama are sincere in their 'God talk'? Does that inspire, comfort -- or frighten -- you?

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I heard Perry's personal testimony when he got saved outside of his home church..before he was running for President... I don't plan to vote for him unless he's running against O..

O...his own childhood has nothing to do with Christianity..And his actions these last three years shows the 'working of Satan...'