This resource can be used to build on 1.03 and/or 1.04, as a transition to 1.06-1.08 or as a standalone. This stimulus is an extract from Barack Obama's 2006 keynote speech on faith and politics (delivered at the Call to Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America conference) on the topic of religion in politics. The exercise encourages students to reflect on how people with different religious views can live and make decisions together in a democratic society.

Politics | Religion & Belief Education | Citizenship | SMSC | Philosophy

• How do secularists think about decisions?
• Why do people support or oppose secularism?

Basic

Students should demonstrate they can:

• Understand how a longer political argument seeks to address the concerns of a range of listeners based on their viewpoints on secularist principles.
• Compare and contrast their own views with the arguments of the source material.

Advanced

In addition to the basic learning outcomes, students should demonstrate they can:

• Extrapolate how others might view the content of a political argument, based on their viewpoints on key secularist principles.
• Critically reflect on the arguments of the source material, comparing and contrasting them to their own.
• Reflect on how the secularist principles expressed in the stimulus would relate to decision-making and key social debates, drawing on a range of outside knowledge.