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President Obama's speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is getting a lot of attention for its (ironic for the occasion) defense of war.

But religion pundits are weighing in on what was a very religion-heavy speech.

(There have been a number of these from the President lately: At the lighting of the White House Christmas tree, Obama spoke of the Christmas story as "a story that is as beautiful as it is simple. The story of a child born far from home to parents guided only by faith, but who would ultimately spread a message that has endured for more than 2,000 years—that no matter who we are or where we are from, we are each called to love one another as brother and sister." Then, as Ed Stetzer noted, the President's first words at his first state dinner were to point out that he was the first President to celebrate Diwali (the Hindu Festival of Lights) and the birth of the founder of Sikhism.)

Here's the relevant section, which evokes the "cling to guns and religion" remark that caused a furor during his campaign:

[S]omehow, given the dizzying pace of globalization, the cultural leveling of modernity, it perhaps comes as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities—their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we're moving backwards. We see it in the Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.

And most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint—no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or the Red Cross worker, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but I believe it's incompatible with the very purpose of faith—for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature. For we are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached—their fundamental faith in human progress—that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey. … Let us reach for the world that ought to be—that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.

At Touchstone, James Kushiner is troubled. "No one believes human nature is perfect. But can it be perfected? He's not saying it can be. He's saying the general human condition can be perfected. So who's going to do that? The only way to do this is for some arrangement of human affairs and institutions that in the aggregate allow for a perfection of condition in which imperfect human beings can live without spoiling that condition. And the only way for such a condition to be arranged is for people who are specially gifted to make those arrangements on the behalf of the imperfect, people who see and understand the complexity of the issues, wiser men whom we can trust. This is an elitism that leads not to the abolition of war by a man of peace, but to the abolition of Man, which violates the Golden Rule, to put it mildly."

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December (Web-Only) 2009, Vol. 53