FaithWorld

U.S. President Barack Obama enlisted the “Religious Left” on Wednesday to help galvanise public support for his faltering drive for healthcare reform, using the language of faith as he accused some of the critics of his biggest domestic project of “bearing false witness.”

Obama made a brief pitch to a “call in” organised by various liberal and progressive faith groups called “40 minutes for Health Reform.” It is part of  a campaign launched last week to counteract a movement to stop “Obamacare” that has been driven in part by conservative Christian activists.

“There has been a lot misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness,” Obama said.

Obama took issue with some of the most emotive allegations that have been raised by social conservative opponents of his vision for overhauling America’s healthcare and health insurance system.

“This notion that somehow we are setting up death panels that would decide on whether elderly people get to live or die  … that is just an extraordinary lie.”

America’s “Religious Left” is jumping into the healthcare debate with a plan to launch a “40 Days for Health Reform” initiative starting Monday.

The move comes as conservative resistance hardens to President Barack Obama’s attempts to overhaul America’s healthcare system. This has taken the form of angry scenes at townhall meetings and has been driven in part by the ”Religious Right,” which claims on Christian radio stations and on the blogosphere that, among other things, “Obamacare” will result in taxpayer-funded abortion. That’s a point disputed by most Democrats and their allies. 

The pro-faith-based healthcare reform campaign is organized by liberal leaning religious groups such as Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Faith in Public Life. Borrowing a page from the Religious Right, the conservative Christian movement that rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as a key base for the Republican Party, the campaign will feature prayer rallies and a national TV ad.

Is it my imagination, or are there lots of new faith coalitions and initiatives sprouting up these days?

The newest one, launched on Wednesday, is The Mobilization to End Poverty. Its main driver is Sojourners, which claims to be the biggest group of self-styled “progressive” Christians in the United States.

The coalition will hold a conference in Washington from April 26-29. The organizers describe it as a “a historic gathering where thousands of Christians and antipoverty leaders will engage in a transformative experience of education, worship, community, and activism in Washington, D.C. Together, this powerful group will call on President Obama and the new Congress to make overcoming poverty a political priority and to develop a national plan that addresses this moral and spiritual crisis.”