Free Republic

President Obama lamented the rancorous, divided state of U.S. politics in a wide-ranging interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson. In the unusual discussion, Obama revealed some of his longstanding frustrations with politics while asking the Iowa author questions about her family, her Christian faith and writings. “How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious...

In a wide-ranging conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson, President Obama suggested that Christians who take their religion the most seriously often adopt an “us versus them” mentality. In the interview, published in the Nov. 5 issue of The New York Review of Books, the president lamented “the fact that here in the United States, sometimes Christian interpretation seems to posit an ‘us versus them,’ and those are sometimes the loudest voices. “But sometimes I think you also get frustrated with kind of the wishy-washy, more liberal versions where anything goes,” Mr. Obama said, referring to Ms. Robinson. “How...