American Heresy

I read Barack Obama's nomination speech this morning. I'm no expert in these things, but it seemed pretty good as a prelude to the final stages of the campaign: nothing transcendent, but it tells us what he'll want to talk about over the next few weeks. Smarter folks than I are spinning the thing back and forth, but I thought I'd toss in a complaint about his closing lines:

“At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.”

Read the statement carefully. This is not something a Christian should be able to say. The hope that we confess is not “the American promise,” although we can take that promise as a gift. The hope that we confess is Jesus. I expect much better from a man who reads Reinhold Neihbur. I mean, I know that conflating the United States and the Church is as traditional as baseball and apple pie, but that doesn't make it right.