Christian left foresees a bolder Obama

Heartened by his calls for gay marriage and for bold action on climate change, leaders of the Christian left are confident that President Obama will now claim the progressive legacy they believe he craves.

While acknowledging disappointment over aspects of the president’s first term—worry over the use of drones as a foreign policy tool is a repeated refrain—progressive Christians say they believe that the president’s solid reelection in November has freed him to pursue concrete progressive goals they say have always been in his heart.

Still, those goals and the legacy they could produce won’t be achieved early, says Gary Dorrien, an ethicist at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.