As scared as secular liberals are of the nefarious "religious right," you never hear them complain when Democrats use religion to increase their vote count. The latest example (h/t: Brian Flaherty) of this comes from CNN which reported on a Sunday Barack Obama speech without even a peep of criticism that the senator might be mixing politics and religion too much:
Speaking to Sunday church congregants in New Orleans, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama invoked Jesus' Sermon on the Mount days before the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
"Getting ready to talk to you today, I recall what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount," Obama said at New Orleans' First Emmanuel Baptist Church. "He said, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on a rock."
"The rains descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall, because it was founded on the rock," he continued.
That rock, he said, was a principal of brotherhood exemplified by the church during Hurricane Katrina — but not the federal government.
"Something was wrong in America. Our foundation wasn't built on the rock," he said.
Obama blasted local, state and federal response to the storm, and touched upon ingredients necessary for the city's rebuilding, namely more employment opportunities for residents to rebuild, community-based law enforcement to tackle the city's crime epidemic, and improved health care.
