The historic forum is over with after a mere hour. Each candidate received 15 minutes and answered questions from Soledad O’Brien, Rev. Jim Wallis and a couple others including viewer questions.
First there was not much time. The 15 minutes went really fast for each candidate limiting the number of questions that were asked.
Edwards started off the night looking comfortable. The biggest issue being addressed tonight was poverty… his core issue for his campaign. I thought he capitalized on the questions of poverty and Katrina quite well. He mentioned his humanitarian work and the urban work he did before elected office (had never heard it before, so it is good to know).
Senator Obama used nearly his whole time to address Rev. Wallis’ question about poverty and policy… something Obama has not been talking about nearly as much as John Edwards. He needed to dive into the question just as he did tonight. I think it was a smart move. It will be interesting to see what the pundits have to say about it though. This forum was his home turf, he received the loudest applause of anyone of them tonight. He has already spoken in front of many of Sojourner’s crowd last summer at the Call to Renewal event.
Hillary Clinton surprised me, although she should not have with the amount of experience she has. She talked candidly about her faith, especially when it came to questions about her marital problems and former President Bill Clinton’s affairs. Her talking about how she was raised not to wear faith on one’s sleeve, was a nice line.
Bottom line. This forum was ground breaking in that it is big time media, the mainstream media, actually talking about progressive faith instead of the typical conservative that dominate the television. It is a quality start to a movement of pushing further ideas in the faith agenda. Many people of faith care deeply about poverty, hunger, and many other issues. Christians do not just vote on abortion and gay marriage. This is a beginning point of demonstrating just that. That’s why we are here! To make our voice heard, to bring about justice, to lift up the oppressed, and to care for the poor.
Beatitudes Society also has a live blogging notes of the event. Now to listen to Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, and Dennis Kucinich on Paula Zahn, or may be not!
Nice job, Aaron (especially since I missed the first part of the debate as we don’t watch TV during our family dinner, so I appreciate the recap.
I need to comment though on your note that “Christians don’t just vote on abortion and gay marriage.” First, OF COURSE NOT…but the way you wrote it, it sounds like Christians vote ONE way on these issues, and of course, they don’t. Polls indicate that Americans are just about split evenly on these issues, as are people of faith. Even significant percentages of people who identify as Evangelical support both the Roe decision and the right of same sex couples to marry or at least have the same civil benefits of marriages.
Today, the Religious Institute published a new “Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Sexual and Gender Diversity.” I hope you will take the time to read it at http://www.religiousinstitute.org
More, I hope to not have to spend the next months and months of this upcoming campaign asking my fellow faith bloggers to not forget that support for sexual justice issues is part of the larger fight for social justice.
Rev. Debra W. Haffner
Of course they don’t but that is how it has been consistently played in the media. The progressive faith voice is not being heard as we saw with the Media Matter/Faith in Public Life report. This Sojo forum is one part of the movement to make the progressive faith voice finally be heard. There are more issues than just abortion and gay marriage and we heard that tonight. I say Amen to it and finally!!!
I will also read your letter. I look forward to it.
Thanks for the update as living on the West Coast made it problematic to view it. I’m hoping to find a rebroadcast time or online video stream.
4 PM just isn’t a good time to try to view something!
The Democrats are using God and Faith as a forum to get elected…not because they are sincere.
I’m suprised at how much $$$ the Democratically controlled house and senate spent on welfare programs prior to 1992. Far more than we have spent on the war in Iraq…yet poverty still exists.
You can’t agree to ‘a women’s right to choose’ aka, abortion, aka, infant murder, and be a Christian….the two do not reconcile.
You must love the inept ideas that you have expressed Russ. If you believe abortion is a sin and Christians sin, then Russ, they do reconcile. If you profess to be a Christian then I am sure you know the thought that we all fall short, we sin every day… it still reconciles… that’s the grace of God.
The very fact that these debates were held says volumes.
It says that Jim Wallis has mobilized enough unity among a large group of faithful to get this kind of political and media attention. It says that politicians recognize a gathering force of kinetic energy in society like surfers recognize a perfect wave building in the ocean.
But it also says that religion has the same potential for political debasement as does any other segment of society. The answers to theological and spiritual questions were superficial at best. Perhaps that’s because of the time limits. Perhaps it’s because the answers were caged in a form tailor made for sound bites by astute political minds. Certainly a question like ‘what was your worst sin’ is a slow, fat waist high pitch destined for orbit.
Let’s give these guys more time and deeper questions that don’t offer room for superficial responses that are the political equivalent of fundamentalist prooftexting. Thanks for the coverage.
Thanks!,