Conservatives' Faith-Based Praise for Obama in Oslo

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Lots of prominent voices on the right are praising Obama's "just war" speech from Oslo yesterday, and lots of it—like the speech itself—has serious religious overtones.

"I liked what he said," Sarah Palin told USA Today. "I talked too in my book about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times."

Fallen nature of man . . . a key tenet of Christianity that gets special emphasis in the evangelical tradition. Hence the need to be born again.

"He clearly understood that he had been given the prize prematurely," Newt Gingrich mused after the speech, "but he used it as an occasion to remind people, first of all, as he said, that there is evil in the world."

Recognizing evil . . . a faith-tinged staple of George W. Bush's speeches.

And conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker says that anyone who still questions whether Obama is truly Christian after yesterday's speech "needs to seek therapy forthwith." Parker called the speech a "Judeo-Christian epistle."

Anyone seen criticism of the speech's religious and moral overtones from the secular left?

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