It seems to me that Minnery and Dobson came off as poor exegetes of the Obama speech, especially if one reads the full speech. Obama cites some statistics designed to make the point that Americans are deeply religious, and Minnery accuses him of diminishing religion and somehow concludes that Obama is saying Christians have nothing to say in the public sphere. Obama mentions Dr. Dobson and Al Sharpton in the context of making the point that there are competing versions of Christianity and Minnery/Dobson take that to mean Obama is has equated Dobson with racism. Obama refers to several scriptural passages to make the point that biblical texts say many things so that even if we agree that we should base public policy on the scriptures we will still have challenges in public discourse to overcome. It seems to me that he was trying to illustrate a problem, not take a position on these passages. Obama calls on religious people to ‘translate’ their concerns into universal language rather than sectarian language. He doesn’t mention the Constitution but is appealing to what one might call the logic of pluralistic democracy. Dobson accuses him of having a ‘fruitcake’ interpretation of the Constitution and of saying that this means religious people can’t fight for what they believe in. There is an important discussion to be had on the degree to which we can successfully translate scripturally rooted views for those who don’t share our presuppositions. One might look at it as a kind of ‘Mars Hill’ approach to public discourse. It seems to me that Obama's speech called us to engage in that task and I thank Dr. Bock for taking up that point.