Berkley Center

Admit it, Secular America. If Mike Huckabee had said something like this on the campaign trail you’d be locking and loading faster than you could hum John Lennon’s lyric “Imagine all the people, Living life in peace”:

"And during the course of that sermon, I was introduced to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed and that if I placed my trust in Christ, He could set me on the path to eternal life."

And you’d probably be thinking again of applying for Canadian citizenship -- just ‘fess up: you were scouting properties in northern Manitoba back around Thanksgiving 2004 -- if the former governor of Arkansas declaimed:

"And whenever I hear stories about Americans who feel like no one’s looking out for them, like they’ve been left behind, I’m reminded that God has a plan for his people. . . . But it’s a plan He’s left to us to fulfill."

But these are not Huck's words. They were, in fact, pronounced by Sen. Barack Obama. He delivered these remarks this past Friday to about 150 Latino Evangelical and Catholic clerics at the University of Texas at Brownsville.

These pious musings have not aroused as much as a peep of protest from nonbelievers and Church-State separatists. (Compare this to the former governor of Arkansas who enraged Secular America when he suggested that we amend the Constitution to God's standards).

This absence of outrage goes a long way in demonstrating how thoroughly secularism in this country is entwined with, and supportive of, political liberalism. For years, the received (albeit flawed) wisdom held that a secularist was a liberal and vice versa. But as the 2008 campaign has shown, Democrats with presidential aspirations are strenuously trying to decouple that association.

Take, for example, Obama's speech on Friday. Do these sound like the words of a politician who is trying to mollycoddle secularists?:

"I'd like to begin with a prayer. It comes to us from Jeremiah 29, when the prophet sent out a letter to those exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon. It was a time of uncertainty, and a time of despair. But the prophet Jeremiah told them to banish their fear – that though they were scattered, and though they felt lost, God had not left them. "For I know the plans I have for you," the Lord revealed to Jeremiah, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." God had a plan for His people. That was the truth that Jeremiah grasped – the creed that brought comfort to the exiles – that faith is not just a pathway to personal redemption, but a force that can bind us together and lift us up as a community."

True, Obama did give a fleeting nod to the godless in his address. He urged Americans to "come together as Protestants, Catholics and Jews, believers and non-believers alike." But anyone familiar with his rhetoric knows that Obama is perennially resolving seemingly insoluble American dialectical tensions (Red States/Blue States, Pro-Choice/Pro-Life, Yankees/Red Sox, whatever).

Obama's speech—it wasn't his best and much of it was rehashed—was filled with a variety of theological ideas (and ambiguities) that we will be discussing for months if he wins big tonight. One is that God has a plan—a plan that is apparently centered on America (but what about Canada?). Another is that the divine plan only comes to fruition if all citizens pitch in and do their part (but what about nonbelievers who won't get with the program?).

Should he seal the deal in Texas and Ohio, the one claim from this speech that we will be scrutinizing most concerns his insistence that "our values should be expressed not just through our families, our communities, and our churches, but through our government." That's the new Faith-and-Values friendly liberalism of the 2008 Democratic Party in 2008. And that's something that may make it hard for secularists to live their lives in peace.