BeliefNet.com provides video of Democratic Senator Barack Obama's powerful speech on the need for compromise on matters of religion and government.
This past summer, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois), delivered the keynote address at a conference sponsored by the progressive Christian magazine Sojourners. Widely acclaimed at the time, in just six months it is increasingly being viewed as historic; a speech not unlike that of another United States Senator almost 50 years before. In September 1960, Sen. John Kennedy addressed the Houston Ministerial Association on what he called the "so-called religious issue" about his Catholicism and the impact it would have upon him were he elected President. In that speech Kennedy said, "I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office." Watch Sen. Obama's speech below to see and hear his take on the vexing question of faith and politics in American life.
