The Obama campaign on Saturday quietly released a web video featuring President Obama talking about his faith. The video includes various faith leaders describing how there is moral, even Biblical, backing for his policies on issues ranging from higher taxes for top earners to health care to the auto bailout.
The video opens with the president at the National Prayer Breakfast where he says, “In my moments of prayer, I’m reminded that faith and values play an enormous role in motivating us to solve some of our most urgent problems.”
Woven throughout the video are statements by persons of faith including, Bishop Vashti McKenzie, Professor Catholic Studies Stephen Schneck, and Rabbi Samuel Gordon.
They open by describing Obama’s faith.
“President Barack Obama is leading with faith values,” McKenzie says. “It comes from this basic core belief that when one part suffers, every part every part suffers, it’s deeply religious belief, it comes out of the scriptures,” said Pastor Kerr.
Obama then follows up with a line from the campaign trail, “I believe in country that rewards hard work and responsibility, a country where we look after one another, a country where I say I’m my brother’s keeper, I’m my sister’s keeper.”
Rabbi Gordon brings up health care saying, “His commitment to making sure young people are able to have health care, those with pre-existing conditions able to have health care, being protected is so important.”
Obama made the connection of health care to religion, saying “When I talk about making sure insurance aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, I do so because genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody, I also do it because I believe in God’s command to love thy neighbor as thyself,” a statement that also is included in the video.
McKenzie then addressed the auto bailout. “When he stands in the gap for the auto industry to be sure there are jobs for people to have, that’s putting your faith in action, that’s putting feet to your faith,” she said in the video.
Obama often brings up the auto industry on the campaign trail saying it was “the right thing to do” and how Mitt Romney, in an op-ed in the New York Times, would have let Detroit go bankrupt. In the op-ed Romney said “Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.”
“Those were moral policies, saving people’s jobs is a moral policy,” Professor Schneck said in the web ad.
The video also talks about those who have more, should give more.
“The Bible tell us that to whom much is given, much is expected,” Schneck said and that “It’s not a way of thinking that’s at odd with success, but recognition with that success, much more is required – morally”
The video closes with Obama at an earlier event saying we need to “I’m asking you to help us recognize ourselves in one another, to show empathy to our brothers and our sisters.”
“This is a president that reaches out to Americans of all faiths – to Muslims and Buddhists, and every Christian denomination. We need a president with arms reaching out in that kind of interfaith way,” Schneck said.
“He has modeled a behavior and acceptance and of support, of the richness of diversity that is the American faith community,” Gordon adds.
