You’re going to hear the nonsense. You really are.
If you’re surrounded by absolute yokels, you’ll hear that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim, even that he attended a Muslim “madrassa” for a few years in elementary school. (He is not, and he did not.) Moving up the ladder, you’ll run into those who take an unfortunate choice of words, his “guns and religion” comment, and suggest not that he is a Muslim, but that he secretly despises religion. (His 20+ years as a committed Christian suggest otherwise.) And from almost every Republican, you’ll hear about how “scary” his two decades in Reverend Wright’s church are. (They’re not.)
Everyone: Barack Obama is a Christian, perhaps the major candidate most devoted to Christianity since Jimmy Carter. Before he gives a speech, he holds prayer with staffers. He prays every night with his family. He attends church frequently — his own when he can, another when he cannot. He attended (until a recent forced break) Trinity United Church in Chicago, one of the nation’s largest predominantly black churches with 8,500 members.
Trinity United requires some explanation, it seems. Black churches have tended to be, particularly in our largest cities, a good deal more missiological than white churches. That is, they tend to focus on a practical theology, which will often include politics (Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others are reverends, after all), anthropology, history and geography as well as theology. Reverend Wright’s extreme positions are not shocking in the context of the black church: it’s just that a predominantly white media has focused on what has been commonplace for many years (the often militant missiology of black churches). What would be shocking, would be to discover that all of his 8,500-strong congregation agreed with him on all counts. Trinity United is a church that Barack Obama attended, not an indoctrination camp for the Black Panthers. Dissent is allowed. (Interestingly, in fact: the church has a role in Chicago history in countering the influence of radical Black Panther groups that set up shop in the city after the height of the civil rights movement.)
A few quotes from Senator Obama with respect to religious faith and politics:
“Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap (the political divide along religious lines), consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.
Democrats, for the most part, have taken the bait. At best, we may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that – regardless of our personal beliefs – constitutional principles tie our hands. At worst, there are some liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant, insisting on a caricature of religious Americans that paints them as fanatical, or thinking that the very word “Christian” describes one’s political opponents, not people of faith.
Now, such strategies of avoidance may work for progressives when our opponent is Alan Keyes. But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives — in the lives of the American people — and I think it’s time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.”
-
“(America’s) religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular mega-churches. In fact, it speaks to a hunger that’s deeper than that – a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause.”
-
“I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.”
-
“You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away – because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.”
-
“Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”
-
“If we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at – to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own – then as progressives, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.
Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome – others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.
In other words, if we don’t reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, then the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons and Alan Keyeses will continue to hold sway.”
-
“The discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical – if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice.
Imagine Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address without reference to “the judgments of the Lord.” Or King’s I Have a Dream speech without references to “all of God’s children.” Their summoning of a higher truth helped inspire what had seemed impossible, and move the nation to embrace a common destiny.”
-
“But, you know, my Bible tells me that if we train a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not turn from it. So I think faith and guidance can help fortify a young woman’s sense of self, a young man’s sense of responsibility, and a sense of reverence that all young people should have for the act of sexual intimacy.”
-
“Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
-
“And that night, before I went to bed I said a prayer of my own. It’s a prayer I think I share with a lot of Americans. A hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all. It’s a prayer worth praying, and a conversation worth having in this country in the months and years to come.”
-
I think I’m going to let these words of Senator Obama stand on their own as a testament to his commitment to Christianity. Anyone still wondering?
