God and Rhetoric at the Convention

Last updated on: September 24, 2012 at 1:36 am by Andre E. Johnson

God and Rhetoric at the Convention 2012-09-24T01:36:00-05:00 Andre E. Johnson

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One of my friends from my study abroad program in Europe listened to Barack Obama’s speech this weekend. “I was thinking ‘this is beautiful but sounds too religious a speech to be held in France,’” he told me. “Yes, well, we are religious folk,” I replied. Americans are some of the most religious of the developed world, and it is commonly held that their path from the pew to the ballot is a short one. Even the secularized American is inundated with religious ideas and imagery.

This is also true of our two major political parties. Republicans sometimes attack Democrats for not mentioning God and imply a special favor He has for their own party, despite His recent predilection for sending hurricanes to their conventions. Yet the Democrats certainly use religion in their rhetoric from time to time. This week’s convention was telling, as the Democrats ultimately didn’t stray too far from religion—at least in words. They initially voted the word “God” (as well as some references to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel) out of their platform at the convention but scurried to put it back in after the decision generated controversy (“Oops!”). As always, there was prayer and the usual asking God to bless the country. Obama quoted the scripture in his acceptance speech, and most of all he talked about one of his favorite one-word slogans, hope—“…not blind optimism or wishful thinking, but hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, that dogged faith in the future which has pushed this nation forward, even when the odds are great, even when the road is long.” By the end of his speech he was cataloguing the things about America that gave him hope—homeless students excelling, factories making sacrifices for their workers, injured veterans on new artificial legs.
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