Politics & Power Quote by David E. Price

Price is doing the careful, practiced work of legitimizing religion in the public square without sounding like he wants a theocracy. The sentence is built like a permission slip: political discourse is not merely compatible with faith, it is "enriched" by it. That verb matters. It frames religious argument as a civic nutrient, not a sectarian intrusion, and it quietly rebukes the idea that serious politics must be scrubbed clean of belief.

The subtext is pluralism with guardrails. Price doesn’t say Christianity, or any tradition by name; he says "faith traditions", and he multiplies the venues - communities, dinner tables, places of worship - to normalize the conversation across private and public life. Dinner tables signal the intimate, everyday America politicians like to invoke; places of worship signal institutional legitimacy; "communities" bridges them into civic space. It’s a map of where religion can speak politically without explicitly asking government to obey it.

There’s also a strategic dodge here: he praises "discussions of the political implications" rather than "religious prescriptions for politics". Implications sound reflective and democratic; prescriptions sound authoritarian. That phrasing invites people of faith to participate while reassuring secular listeners that the conversation remains a conversation.

Contextually, this is a late-20th/early-21st-century Democratic posture associated with mainline or moderate politics: acknowledge religion’s motivating power, reject culture-war absolutism, and claim the language of inclusion. It’s not fiery rhetoric; it’s civic hygiene - an attempt to keep faith present, but not sovereign, in democratic debate.