In The Huffington Post, Deepak Chopra and Dave Stewart argue that Obama is “a symbol of the rise of secular spirituality in this country”:

One senses a blessed return to rationality and the end of intolerant dogma as Obama prepares to enter the White House, but secular spirituality has expanded since the days of Jefferson and Adams. It now includes the following principles that we urge the new President to espouse (several of them he already has):

— A spiritual duty to be benign stewards of the Earth and to preserve the ecology.
— A responsibility to revere Nature and to be humble before it.
— A duty to further peace among nations.
— A pledge of nonviolence that will lead finally to total nuclear disarmament in our lifetime.
— A refusal to use America’s super power for militaristic ends.
— A sense of compassion for the poor and wretched beset by pandemic disease, lack of political influence, and denial of basic human rights.

If Obama can further any of these values, he will be leaping miles ahead of his predecessor. Nothing about secular spirituality is radical. Most of its principles are articles of belief for millions of average Americans who have largely been shut out of politics for eight years.

Read the full piece and watch the authors’ music video for “I Take the Vow” here.