Obama, or the Call for Reason

It’s already been one hundred days that Obama has occupied the White House. It’s the occasion to draw a first assessment in the American press. Proof that a turn is in progress, the numerous super-conservative media outlets, including the information channel Fox News, are enraged at the new president, who has not missed an occasion to displease them.

On the outside, Obama has already rehabilitated the principle of multilateralism, and has shown a newfound firmness towards the Israeli government. Internally, he has put an end to the embargo created by his predecessor George Bush against the foreign family planning centers, and is getting ready to take advantage of the retirement of a Supreme Court judge to replace him with a liberal judge. Better yet, he just announced that this year, going against tradition, the White House will not celebrate the national prayer day. A true sacrilege in this nation supposedly secular but always “Under God.”

Started by Harry Truman and moved to the first Thursday of May under Ronald Reagan, this day conveys multiple religious events, including a great mass where all sorts of religions and chapels are invited to pray together at the White House. Not this year. This was bound to cause a general outcry among religious associations. To calm things down, the spokesperson for the administration feels obligated to remind that, of course, the president prays every day and that he will observe the national day of prayer, but in private. Secular organizations were hoping for more. They regret that officials still join the celebrations organized in each state. As if the role of politicians was to invite to prayer. Regardless, the signal given by the White House is a true act of secularism.

Bill Clinton had been satisfied with a minimal celebration. But since its instauration in 1954, no one had dared to use this day to mark so visibly a separation between the public and the private regarding religion. This act requires some guts in America. Especially when your name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that the conservative foxes think they can sniff in each of your gestures the proof of a secret affiliation to Islam, especially as of late, since the American president was too submissive in front of the king of Saudi Arabia.

Obama’s courage can actually be explained by a long identity quest, a critical personal mind and the proximity with a progressive Christianity contrasting with the dominating and intolerant temptations of the religious conservative America. In his autobiography “Dreams from My Father,” the young Obama does not hide his doubts and his interrogations towards the Creationist version of the origin of mankind. Later, the Illinois senator will give a pleading speech in defense of secularism. It is time to say that “America is no longer a Christian nation,” he declared in 2006: “We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation and a Hindu nation and a nation of nonbelievers.” After the campaign, in which his opponents regularly used God in attempts to delegitimize him, he invited politicians to “translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.”

A promise that he keeps himself. He may quote the Gospels every once in a while, as almost every politician in a country where oratory art remains marked by preaching. However, contrary to his predecessor, Barack Obama does not utilize religious references to impose an authoritarian speech, or flatter emotion at the cost of reason. He promised hope, not a miracle. With him, Americans learn again to look at reality in the face. All those who confuse a head of state with a messiah or a prophet will be disappointed in the end. Yet it is this modesty, full of rational hope, which should be reassuring.