I've argued so far that the atheists who denigrate faith as dangerous, as “the devil's masterpiece”, in Harris's words (2004: 226), look away from an interesting complication. Even people who are not in the least religious are in the habit of using the word in a positive way. In this chapter we shall look at some of the non-religious associations of “faith”: in politics, economics and psychology. With the financial crisis that began in September 2008, and the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency, the news in recent months has been dominated by the need for faith, and the role of faith in political life.

Faith, hope and Obama

I could not be writing this at a better moment. Earlier this week Barack Obama was inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Two million people congregated in Washington, DC, and much of the rest of the world watched on television.

As his campaign for presidential election hotted-up in 2008, it became clear that Obama was something out of the ordinary. There was a cultic element to his following, and to his mantra: “Yes we can”. He was forging a new politics of enthusiasm, in the literal sense of religious excitement, and this wasn't limited to his own country; much of the rest of the world was carried along. And this was intensified by the new uncertainty unleashed by the economic crisis: the world seemed to need strong moral leadership more obviously than usual. So it began to seem that this man embodied political idealism in a more ambitious way, a more convincing way, than I had ever seen. He has become the focus for our attempts to be hopeful about the world situation.