I’m a big fan of Barack Obama, and hope to see him in the Oval Office someday, but he’s just plain wrong here:

Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty…

At the same time, he said, "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square."

As a result, "I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people and join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy."

All he is doing is here is employing the fake Republican talking point that "Democrats" are godless and attacking religion.  It’s not like you see Democrats/liberals urging people to stop praying and then handing them a "Howard Dean for President" button.

And secularists don’t ask people to abandon their religious beliefs when they enter the public square.  They merely ask that people refrain from using the taxpayer-funded "public square" to propogate their religious beliefs on others.  Surely, Obama understands the difference.

Atrios agrees:

Dear Senator Obama,

If you think it’s important to court evangelicals, then court them. If, on the other hand, you think it’s important to confirm and embrace the false idea that Democrats are hostile to religion in order to set yourself apart, then continue doing what you’re doing. It won’t help the Democrats, and it probably won’t even help you, but whatever makes you happy.

Love and kisses,

Atrios

The thing is, the gap between the Democratic platform and Jesus Christ is much smaller than the GOP and Christ.  Democrats care about the poor.  So did Jesus.  Democrats care about the sick.  So did Jesus.  And so on. 

So yes, Democrats should do more to reach out to evangelicals and make them understand that if Jesus was a living politician in 2006, he would be advocating universal health care — not having the Ten Commandments in schoolrooms.

UPDATE:  Pam Spaulding has similar thoughts:

There is not a lack of acknowledgment of faith and the role it plays in American lives, it’s dismay at the buy-in by the Democratic establishment of the Republican spin that the faith community is only made up of those who are socially conservative.

This is partially a failure of the voices in the progressive religious community to make inroads in the debate, to effectively counter the fundamantalist fringe, and clearly the message is still not getting through when you have Barack Obama uttering this…

No, the issue is that politicians, beholden to the fringe religious movement, want to force, quite specifically, their view of the world, a set of religious standards on everyone — and to enact legislation that reflects the prejudices spurred by that perspective.

And make no mistake, these folks mean “Christianity” as the fundamentalists define it. The fundie movement has as its objective the demonization/recloseting of gays and the control of the sexuality and reproductive freedom of women. They want to merge church and state. These are the folks that the Dems want to court?

There is an anti-religion element on the left that has no patience for any of this, and they also have a hard time remembering that the people of faith are not all bible beating whack jobs. Many in the faith community can be courted — just not the fundamentalists, who cannot be reasoned with.

It really is incumbent on the progressive religious community to continue to speak out on this matter, to stop the spin being perpetrated by the Rovian right.

***

Obama’s position reflects a decision to ignore the political goals of the religious right, which is guided and cloaked by their perversion of faith.

Countries continue to fight wars over religion and our Framers knew that we needed to keep this sh*t separated.

This is why we are having to painfully, continuously work out the details over which issues are church/state separation matters when it comes to political institutions and power. It is messy by necessity.

Unfortunately the right has been able to frame the issues, and the sad, crappy truth is the Dems just buy in to the spin, rather than counter the argument.