One Abraham or three? The conversation between three faiths
In his June 2009 speech at Cairo University, Barack Obama invoked a scene from Muhammad’s night journey in which Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad are joined in prayer. Obama sketched out his vision of the Holy Land as a place of peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims against the backdrop of long years of bloodshed and religious strife. He appealed to the “children of Abraham” to open a new era of politics.
Like the Founding Fathers, Obama acknowledged the importance of religion for public morality and democracy. For the revolutionary generation, the health of democratic government depended on values derived from religion. The American experiment was doomed to fail without pious and responsible citizens. For the founders, democracy and faith complemented each other like two spouses in a well-functioning marriage.
Public religion—that is, a broadly shared system of beliefs, symbols, and values at the center of American democracy—was a key element in the construction of the republic. In his Farewell Address of 1796, George Washington reminded the nation that “religion and morality are indispensable supports [for] political prosperity” and warned that the supposition that “morality can be maintained without religion” should be indulged “with caution.”
