Dr. Albert Mohler reflects on Senator Obama’s now famous statement from a San Francisco fund raiser. Obama was explaining how hard economic times encourage some people to lean upon religion, guns, and certain political convictions:
“It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Mohler notes that this is a great example of putting religion in a “functional” category–something politicians on both sides of the aisle have been known to do. Religion is valuable insofar as it fulfills some “function” (e.g. helping people cope with hard times):
“A functional view of belief assumes or “brackets” the question of whether the beliefs are true. One who holds to a purely functionalist view of religious conviction is not concerned with the truthfulness of these beliefs, but only with the effects the beliefs have on the believer, both privately and in social contexts.”