Religions have the power to bring a passion for social justice to politics

[CHIMO]

At first I thought it just plain daft; why waste £150,000 putting a slogan on hundreds of London buses: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." It managed to combine so many dotty assumptions - belief in God as a source of worry or as a denial of enjoyment - that I couldn't see who it was supposed to convince. Besides, how can "probably" change someone's mind?

Then I thought about how it might look through the eyes of some of the people who travel on the buses I use from Hackney. The ones who look exhausted returning from a night shift of cleaning. Often they have a well-thumbed Bible or prayer book to read on their journey. And along comes a bus emblazoned with that advert. A slogan redolent of the kind of triumphal atheism only possible when you have had the educational opportunities, privileges and material security of the British middle class. The faith of this person is what sustains their sense of hope and, even more importantly, their sense of dignity when they are confronted every day by the adverts of affluence that mock them as "losers", as failed consumers. Ouch, I winced that we can be so blindly self-indulgent to this elitist patronising.

The irony of course is that the trio of intellectuals roped in to launch the advert, led by Richard Dawkins, are in all likelihood going to be celebrating the presidential inauguration of a passionate Christian, Barack Obama, next week - a man commonly agreed to be one of the most intelligent politicians of our age. But what they might prefer to overlook is that he chose - after an agnostic upbringing with doses of atheism from a distant father - to become a Christian in his 20s. "I felt God's spirit beckoning me and I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth," he writes in his book, The Audacity of Hope. You can't do pick and mix on Obama: he is pretty forthright that Jesus died to redeem his sins.

Obama's faith cannot be explained away as political opportunism to meet the conventions of American politics. The conversion was well before a political career seemed possible; besides, his faith has dragged him into plenty of controversy during his campaign. Recently, liberal secular allies have been shocked by his decision not to dismantle, but to take over and expand, Bush's controversial flagship policy of funding faith-based organisations to provide social services. Even worse, he has chosen the evangelical preacher Rick Warren (opposes gay marriage, anti-abortion but passionate on social justice and climate change) to deliver the prayer at the inauguration. The point is that Obama has not wavered in his passionate faith in the progressive potential of religious belief since he first encountered it in south Chicago in community organising. He was in his 20s, and for three years he was trained in a politics based on a set of principles developed by a Jewish criminologist and an ex-Jesuit with borrowings from German Protestant theologians.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/12/madeleine-bunting-religion-social-justice

[babylonsister]

1. Or, the passion for social justice was there before religion.

Some religions, not so much.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. Yes, It's political opportunism. Look at the book it's in. The book he wrote to run on.

That said, religion has indeed done both radically liberal and horrifyingly conservative things. What else is new?

[madrchsod]

3. hey "jesus is just alright with me....."

i see no problem with obama`s beliefs but i do question at least one of the people he keeps company with.

[burning rain]

4. I think religion is a net minus.

Unlike secular reasoning, it can distract people from their earthly problems and interests with promises of a better state beyond the grave, which I consider a baseless hope. This obviously plays into the hands of conservatives.

[ZombieHorde]

5. This would really benefit from a clear thesis sentence.