Politics trump morals for Obama, Biden

The selection of Sen. Joseph Biden as Barack Obama's running mate underscores, once again, the challenges faced by these candidates among evangelical Christians and Catholics. In the case of Obama, the concern is that his faith is not the sort of Christianity that most evangelicals or Catholics would profess. Far from solving this problem, the selection of Biden brings to the ticket a man at odds with the highest levels of his own Catholic faith.

The result is that these candidates seem unlikely to be able to reassure the evangelical and Catholic voters -- whom they need to win the election -- that the Obama-Biden ticket shares their core values.

Obama's troubles with Catholics and evangelicals can be traced to his many years of attendance at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, a church that professes a belief in "liberation theology." According to "talking points" listed on Trinity Church's Web site, "The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's book, Black Power and Black Theology."

Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren summarized the distrust evangelicals have for liberation theology when he said on Fox News: "Black liberation theology is an even more extreme version of liberation theology, which started in Latin America and has been totally discredited. It was basically Marxism in Christianity."

Catholics too are wary of liberation theology, and none has been more outspoken on the issue than Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote several years before his election as pope that for liberation theology, "Nothing lies outside . . . political commitment. Everything has a political color. A theology that is not . . . essentially political, is regarded as 'idealistic' and thus as lacking in reality."

Presented with a chance at Saddleback to make inroads among evangelicals and Catholics, Obama missed the opportunity. Nowhere was this more clear than in his "above my pay grade" comment and his assertion that "if you believe that life begins at conception ... then I can't argue with you on that because that is a core issue of faith for you." Catholics and evangelicals everywhere couldn't help but take that to mean that it wasn't an issue of faith for him.

Choosing Biden, a Catholic politician who has supported Roe vs. Wade for many years, has compounded the problem.

Pope Benedict, during his April visit to Washington, D.C., spoke of the need to practice faith in public life: "Christians are easily tempted to conform themselves to the spirit of this age. . . . We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion."

And just this month, Archbishop Raymond Burke -- the equivalent of chief justice of the Vatican's Supreme Court -- said communion should be refused to "a public official who knowingly and willingly supports actions which . . . publicly promote procured abortion, which is the taking of innocent, defenseless human life."

Biden, who claims a personal opposition to abortion that he is unwilling to follow in his public life, falls into this category. He now faces the possibility not only of alienating Catholics, but also of being refused communion on the campaign trail.

The problem -- for Catholics and evangelicals alike -- is that a ticket whose politics appear to trump moral reasoning is not a compelling ticket. Catholics and evangelicals are looking for candidates who share their core values, not just their pews or holy water.

Carl A. Anderson is Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic men's fraternal benefits society.