Christianity's political mandate. How can we talk about it?

All of the presidential candidates have to wear faith. John McCain sees the power of the creator in the sunset over the Grand Canyon, Hillary Clinton's faith got her through the tough times at the White House as first lady, and Barack Obama has had to "kneel before the cross." All of these professions are politically expedient and generally devoid of much content. But they sure do assure the American electorate that their leaders and commanders-in-chief of the military to be are moral people. If they are religious, they can get their feet in the door at least.

After Obama's minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright was found to have said racially divisive things from his pulpit, Obama had to give one of the most eloquent speeches I've ever heard. It was nuanced. Cautious on one hand and ambitious on the other. [Watch below.] But there was a lot he didn't say about one of the other great dividing social constructions in the U.S.

Religion. Obama recognized that the most segregated day of the week in America is Sunday because people split into their enclaves and do their thing. His speech overtly recognized this as a racial division. It is. But it's also so much more. It's sectarian. It's divisive. It's all about the us vs. them created by the interpretation of magic books (if you're a serious believer), how you are to align your life with the interpretation of the magic book(s), and/or who you want to hang out with on a Sunday morning (also potentially serious but maybe just vacuously social). The divisions are invented.

They are beliefs based on what we think about the fantasies and strictures of pre-scientific people scrabbling for a homeland in the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. There is no soundly logical reason that we should construct our Sunday mornings around these shepherds' and farmers' ideas than we should around ancient Hindu or Shinto ideas. The soundness of their inherited moral structures have their own merits for just and merciful societies. But instead, we are laden with stupid cultural judgments masquerading as divine judgments that prevent us from having genuine moral discourse.

I'm sure Obama recognizes this. Can he say it? No he can't. Yesterday I posted a link to an interview he gave with The Advocate. He very clearly states that he is going to be the president (and he is) that invites us to have a great discussion on the matters that face us. We aren't going to agree on these matters. Neoliberal economists and socialists and gays and cultural conservatives and civil libertarians and blacks and southeast Asians and Christians and Muslims.

But it seems that to enter the discussion you have to affirm religion's position, a priori, as good and right. If Obama or any other candidate were to call into question the efficacy of how lots of religious belief shapes public opinion, domestic policy, foreign policy, the separation of church and state as a very good thing. Even asking the question might bring about such a torrent that the conversation would turn into a fight. Too many people are indoctrinated to think of their "faith" as necessarily good that it faith can't be called into question without foaming at the mouth. Any politician who would do such a thing would be seen as deliberately instigating a fight. Atheists are perceived as so dangerous precisely because we create that conversation and say, generally unequivocally, that Americans believe in a false moral foundation. We are told to shut up on Paula Zahn Now and told to leave the Illinois legislature and are the least trusted minority in the country. Why? Because we want to instigate the very conversation that too few people are willing to have.

What would the conversation be like? We're starting to have it while the politicians are (un)scrupulously avoiding it. It will be a while until a politician besides Rep. Pete Stark (D - Ca.) can come out as a non-believer.

But the "New Atheists," me among them and spearheaded by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens, are demanding this conversation.

Should John Hagee be guiding our foreign policy? Is belief in the "rapture" maladaptive? Yes. Aligning Roman-era Hebrew mythology and prophecy with modern catastrophic technology is a recipe for disaster.

Abortion? Euthanasia? Health care? Contraception? Education? Civil liberties? The natural environment? How is religion crating a greater understanding of our place in the universe? How is it dividing us? What in any of it is reasonable, tenable, adaptive, or sustainable? These are all vitally important to converse about.

Obama noted that people - white and black alike - are having different conversations in public than they are in private. The same is true regarding the sphere of religious belief and non-belief. There is a great silent and uncomfortable population of moderates out there that need to enter into this.

Let's have at it. I plead with Obama, Clinton, and McCain to take some leadership on this. They are all apparently moderate enough on the issue that they can't be either a fundamentalist of Huckabee's stripes or a would-be fundamentalist like Romney. Nor are they possibly shrill atheists like Sam Harris (who also wrote on this topic) or Dawkins. They could invite us to really consider how faith should play in public life instead of accepting it as status quo. Can we do that?

"Yes we can."