The Orthodox Union’s Nathan Diament has some advice for Barack Obama. Writing in The New Republic, Diament — the OU’s public policy director — urges the incoming president to do more than offer religious voters symbols, like an inaugural invocation by Rev. Rick Warren. Obama, Diament writes, has an opportunity to “advance policies that are important to them” — and can do so without sacrificing Democratic Party principles on issues like abortion, gay rights, and school vouchers.
To that end, he suggests that Obama support programming aimed at reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies; ensure that religious schools and social welfare agencies can continue to receive federal funding, regardless of their policies on homosexuality, and make federal grants available to parochial schools expanding their pre-kindergarten programs or greening their campuses. He writes:
”In their faith-outreach efforts, Democrats were wont to quote the Book of James’ statement that ‘faith without works is dead.’ If there were a Talmudic commentary to the Christian Bible, it might suggest that having won the power to govern, Democrats ought now to reread this verse to say, ‘Without work, faith outreach will be dead.’”
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and a titan of the religious right, has some ideas on which Jews would make good number twos for John McCain.
Land tells CBSNews.com:
I think that the vice presidential choice that John McCain makes is probably the most important choice he’s going to make in this entire campaign. Because he has no room for error, no margin for doubt. If he picks a pro-choice running mate, it will confirm the unease and the mistrust that some evangelicals — and don’t forget this, social conservative Catholics — feel about McCain.
That, of course, means Joe Lieberman’s out. Land explains:
Many of the remarks that have been pointed to by Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights chief Bill Donohue as evidence of the pastor’s anti-Catholicism were made by Hagee in a presentation assailing historical Christian antisemitism.
In other words, Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, has landed himself in hot water as a result of his zealous defense of Jews.
Note Hagee’s explanation of his controversial remarks:
Copyright © 2012, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
