(ABP) -- The very fact that President Obama offered a commencement speech at Notre Dame revealed bitter conflicts within the American Catholic community and similar clashes within evangelicalism.

Obama did not create these fierce internal rifts within American Christianity. But in the days leading up to Sunday, May 17, he did serve to symbolize them. His commencement speech gave one of the nation's finest recent political orators a chance to tackle them.

Here is my textual analysis:

In his first line, Obama commended the president of Notre Dame for his "commitment to honest, thoughtful dialogue." Obama described this commitment as "an inspiration to us all." But of course for dissenters some issues (such as abortion) should not be subject to such dialogue, and those who invite such dialogue are not an inspiration. The reach for common ground falters immediately, but Obama probably understood that.

Speaking to graduates about the world they are entering, the president described "a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges before us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age. It is a privilege and a responsibility afforded to few generations."

It may be that every generation views itself as facing world-historical challenges that require bold action, but it is certainly the case that this president reads reality in this way at this moment. This helps to account for the breathtaking speed and scope of the administration's efforts to "remake" both foreign policy and domestic policy. It is already clear that this president is swinging for the fences. His election as an African-American is itself historic, and he is aiming for a presidency that will match the significance of his election.

In enumerating challenges facing this generation, the president named reshaping the global economy toward justice, diligence and long-term responsibility and not just moving toward an immediate U.S. economic recovery; saving "God's creation" and addressing climate change; and making peace in a shrinking world endangered by weapons of mass destruction.

On this latter point he pivoted to the controversy surrounding his speech and thus to the primary thesis of his address: "We must find a way to live together as one human family."

Obama argued that meeting indiscriminate global threats requires "greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places" than in any earlier era, in part because the problems are too big for any "one person, or religion, or nation" to meet alone. This language sounds very much like Vatican II-era (1960s) Catholic social teaching, with a tang of the later speeches of JFK and Bobby Kennedy.

Why is global human cooperation so difficult? Here President Obama brought out his Reinhold Niebuhr, emphasizing the disastrous impact of "original sin" and "the imperfections of man" including selfishness, pride, greed, stubbornness, insecurity, prejudice and cruelty.

One aspect of the tragedy of human existence (Niebuhr's language, not Obama's, but the theme is there) is that even the most earnest and thoughtful people of good will who care passionately about important issues like security, AIDS and the sanctity of human life often find themselves in deep conflicts over what is right and good in relation to those issues. And Obama rightly pointed out that in some cases, as with abortion, those differences are simply "irreconcilable."

The president was saying the human condition under original sin includes irreconcilable differences on matters of the greatest passion and conviction. This is simply a fact. It has bedeviled every generation. Our best efforts to persuade others to our views frequently fail. Nor can we kill our way to social unity.

So we're stuck with each other, with all of our unbridgeable differences. What do we do about it? The president proposed a posture of "open hearts, open minds, [and] fair-minded words" toward those with whom we differ, and a practice of seeking "at least the possibility of common ground." Start off with "the presumption of good faith" toward others, and think creatively about finding an overlap point where what you want and what they want can coalesce.

Then at last the president addressed the abortion issue that had caused so much controversy, and did so almost as an illustration of the method he had just proposed. He articulated key elements of a common ground abortion reduction strategy that his administration is currently developing and invited both sides to gather on this patch of common ground even while disagreeing about everything else.

The president moved on to reflect on his days in Chicago as a community organizer and his encounters there with the beloved Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Catholicism's great exponent and practitioner of a consistent pro-life ethic. Obama said that Cardinal Bernardin's moral witness -- his goodness and wisdom, his way of finding common ground, his gentleness and congeniality -- played a role in helping Barack Obama himself find Christ.

In the last major movement of his speech, the president again echoed Niebuhr in saying that "the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt." The fact that we are not God, that we do not know everything, should not destroy our faith or ethics but should humble us, "temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness." It should make us open to the views of others, because we might just learn something we didn't know. And it should lead us into acts of loving service, which both meet immediate human needs and move the "hearts and minds" of others into openness to our core convictions, even the gospel itself.

So here we have two competing models as to how to advance Christian convictions in the public square: uncompromising, zealous defense of a Truth surely known by us, versus a humbler, more tolerant theology accepting of irreconcilable differences and committed to the open-hearted search for a patch of common ground.

It would be easy to say that all properly tolerant respectable folks should just choose the path of tolerance and common ground. But some things are not tolerable--like, for example, genocide or child abuse -- and on such things there can be no common ground. Therefore the final word on all subjects cannot always be tolerance and common ground.

But perhaps the president is suggesting that it should be our default position until our reading of reality demands a more uncompromising path. And even then, we might just lose, and might have to live in community with people we believe are doing great wrongs -- which is where the day began at Notre Dame for Barack Obama, and where it begins for all of us in this sprawling, squabbling human family.

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David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. 

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