Today, amid a great deal of controversy, President Obama delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. As a rhetorical scholar, I’m very impressed (but not all that surprised!) by the way President Obama used the controversy and the public attention surrounding his visit to motivate his speech and call for common ground; I can’t help but think that that part of his speech is about as good a mission statement for the growing Christian progressive movement as we can find.

We’d also like to congratulate and express our gratitude to our friends at Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good for their tireless work on behalf of common ground and dialogue, in providing a space for people to express their support for Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins and his choice to invite President Obama to deliver this year’s commencement.

Finally, we’d like to congratulate Notre Dame’s class of 2009 – and all this year’s graduates – on their degrees. The young are this nation’s most valuable resource; young Christians are the vanguard of changing the religious conversation in this country to a more progressive one. Congrats… now go out and change the world.

Part 1:

Parts 2-4, and a transcript, after the jump:
(more…)