There appeared to be one underlying theme in Obama’s speech at the graduation of Notre Dame—common ground. He advocated that the two opposing viewpoints needed to come together to find common ground. To illustrate this point, he told a story about a doctor who had written him during the campaign and that was concerned Obama may not treat abortion with fairness, but that he would treat all those who oppose abortion as “ideologues.” Obama concluded that he changed the statement on his website that prompted the doctor to write him and then followed up with this statement about why he did so, “That I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the Doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that, when we open up our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe, that’s when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.”

I think that this has now opened up the great possibility for the debate concerning abortion to move forward as Christians can now capitalize on the theme of “common ground.” For those who may not be sure about how to address abortion in a manner that promotes common ground, I encourage you to read a book entitled Common Ground. I wrote a review of the book some time ago, which you can read here.

This is an opportunity to advance the conversation concerning abortion that we, as Christians, should not allow to pass by. President Obama has injected the concept of common ground into the liberal atmosphere like never before and considering that there is no way of knowing how long it will remain in the atmosphere or if it will ever be promoted like this again, it is an opportunity that Christians simply cannot afford to let go by the wayside.

Below is a clip of Obama’s speech where he brings out the theme of common ground (click here if video does not appear).