Writer Tom Grieve provides the context for Senator Barack Obama's (D-IL) comment about the church being ""my house too"" at Rick and Kay Warren's conference on AIDS. As it turns out, Obama was responding to some remarks made earlier by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS):
As he opened his remarks Friday at a World AIDS Day summit at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, Republican Sen. Sam Brownback said he was feeling a little more "comfortable" than he did the last time he shared a stage with Barack Obama. "We were both addressing the NAACP," Brownback explained. "They were very polite to me … [but] I think they kind of wondered, 'Who's this guy from Kansas?' And then Barack Obama follows, and they're going, 'OK, now we've got Elvis.'"
Figuring their joint appearance at an Orange County evangelical church finally put the shoe on the other foot, Brownback turned to Obama and said, "Welcome to my house." The audience of evangelicals howled with laughter. But when Obama had the chance to speak a few minutes later, he returned to what Brownback had said: "There is one thing I've got to say, Sam: This is my house, too. This is God's house."
Everyone laughed again -- neither Brownback's opening nor Obama's comeback were offered with the rancor that a cold retelling of them probably suggests -- but the point had been made anyway.
Also, according to Tom Grieve, after some anti-abortion groups protested against Senator Obama's participation in the event, Obama offered to stay away if it would detract from the main focus of the event. Here's the relevant passage of Grieve's story:
The invitation caused a stir among anti-abortion leaders on the right. The National Clergy Council, among others, urged Warren to disinvite Obama, saying it was immoral for Christians to work in any capacity with anyone who supported abortion rights.
Obama offered to stay away, telling Warren in a phone call earlier this week that he didn't want to be a distraction from Warren's AIDS work. Warren declined, saying Friday that the AIDS problem is too big to start turning away people who are willing to "work to save lives."
One other detail. In a Newsweek interview (see post below for more on this interview), Kay Warren provides this background on the invitation to Obama to participate in their AIDS conference:
When Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, spoke out against the inclusion of Sen. Barack Obama as a speaker at the summit, did that surprise you?
A bit, and maybe I was a little naïve, but I was so intrigued by [Obama]. I watched him take an HIV test in Kenya and could not think of anyone else like him who had done that publicly, and I immediately thought of him when we were putting together our program. That kind of stuff takes leadership. I’m cognizant of the fact that you can’t get the approval of everyone on everything. But that’s not going to stop us from pursuing our goal of doing our best to end this epidemic. And toward that, we’ll concentrate on the intersection of people that come together on this goal. That’s where we’re going to work, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with us.
(Thanks to Jesus Politics for the link to the stories.)
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