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Think Republicans have cornered the market on God? The GOP's "Southern strategy" has managed to alienate the most consistently religious demographic in this nation: African-Americans.

Blacks are often lampooned as the Democrats' lapdogs, voters that the party simply takes for granted every election season and ignored afterwards. There may be some truth in that. But that hardly means that in choosing to vote for Democrats, we aren't also repudiating those who have ignored us the most.

Witness today's criticism of Barack Obama by James Dobson.

Dr. Dobson (not a doctor of theology, mind you - his degree's in child development) is mistaking his influence within the American church for a license to be an attack dog for the Right. Worst of all - he's not being very Christian when he does this:

What angers me most about Dobson is the same thing that angers me about every self-righteously pious jerk whose real agenda is supporting the Republican Party: He claims to know God's will better than the rest of us. And that, of course, means the rest of us should shut up, sit down and let him run our world.

Dobson's misunderstanding of the Bible strikes at the very core of Christianity and identifies him as distinctly un-Christian. His reckoning of the faith bears little resemblance to the one founded by the humble Nazarean who washed the feet of the tax collector, found worth in the wayward woman about to be stoned and breathed forgiveness at His last to a thief. The Gospel According to Dobson is a testament to a vindictive, swaggering Christianity that constructs a cross of lies upon which to crucify its enemies.

Perhaps Dr. Dobson should be reminded of Matthew 7, verses 21-23 before he proceeds deeper into the hole he's digging for himself:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Opposition has risen up via a new site whose name echoes my sentiments, and Obama has said that Dobson's "making stuff up". Let's forget for a second that Dr. Dobson dug up a two-year-old speech of Obama's to whack him with, and that his obvious motivation is to short-circuit the gains Obama has been making amongst evangelicals. I'd urge him to be much stronger in his response. I think that people need to be woken up here, and this is a prime opportunity to help America understand his very intelligent point in a straightforward manner (honestly, I'd forgotten that Obama even said it):

What he’s trying to say is that it’d be unfair and unconstitutional to make policy based on the ipse dixits of some religion’s God. You’re fully entitled to fight for what you believe, but if you’re going to turn it into law, you need a better justification as a legal matter than “Because God says so.” Otherwise, the only people who will understand it — not agree with it, necessarily, but understand it (i.e. who’ll find it “accessible”) — are people of your own faith.

Sullivan linked this same excerpt, and proclaimed the attack a veritable, ahem, godsend for the Senator from Illinois:

What Obama is doing is to ratchet back the bad use of faith in the public square, while insisting on the validity of people of faith in the public square. He's still too willing to invoke faith himself - his own version - to justify public policy. But this pushback against the extreme of the right is an enormously important project - central to Obama's promise to get us past the hideous cultural deadlock of the past two decades. Obama is as productive to this debate as Bush was toxic. And what Obama is doing - whether he intends to or not - is to open space within conservatism for the kind of reasoned, limited government, pragmatic conservatism that we badly need to revive.

Now Obama has to take this head-on. He can't simply say that Dobson's "making stuff up" in a dismissive manner. He has to show these fake Christians how things are done where he comes from, and now.

I say to Obama: don't dodge the abortion issue. With McCain threatening to overturn Roe v. Wade if he's elected, it needs to be talked about more than ever (and not simply for cynical reasons, like winning women's votes). And while there may not have been a (direct) racial element to Dr. Dobson's smear today, rest assured the Christians he's trying to turn against you aren't African-American.

Shout it from the mountaintop, Senator. A nation has its attention turned to you. Use your new pulpit wisely.