The Tory Party

Your Daily Obama - Faith

(Reprinted without permission from The Audacity of Hope. Presented with no commentary, because Obama speaks for himself, which is nice.)

The story of Abraham and Isaac offers a simple but powerful example… Of course, we know the happy ending… And yet it is fair to say that if any of us saw a twenty-first-century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of his apartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle him down; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, we would expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse. We would do so because God doesn’t reveal Himself or His angels to all of us in a single moment. We do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experience may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know, understanding that a part of what we know to be true — as individuals of communities of faith — will be true for us alone


Finally, any reconciliation between faith and democratic pluralism requires some sense of proportion. This is not entirely foreign to religious doctrine; even those who claim the Bible’s inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, based on a sense that some passages — the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ’s divinity — are central to Christan faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life. The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a constitutional amendment banning it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in couseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics.

- Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, pp. 220 - 221

Warning - Male Gaze

Heh heh. This was commissioned by Stephan Zielinski, science-fiction author, photographer, and fellow zombie-enthusiast, as he sought a caveat for his photographs of this year’s Dyke Festival in San Francisco.

Good times. Good ti-i-i-i-i-imes.