Photo by David Katz/Obama forIllinois)
(David Katz/Obama forIllinois)
Posted on 07/27/2004 8:26:00 AM PDT by mrustow
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| Barack Obama with Illinois Senate President Emil Jones and other leaders at a 1,500 person rally for the Senator at Liberty Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side on Tuesday, March 9th.
Photo by David Katz/Obama forIllinois) |
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| Barack Obama speaks to a crowd at Liberty Baptist Church.
(David Katz/Obama forIllinois) |
"That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.”
Thus, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama in a campaign contribution by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani. (Obama’s supporters include not only constituents giving him monetary contributions, but alleged journalists who see their job as doing everything in their power to get him elected.)
In the next breath, Falsani would appear to contradict herself, by claiming that “Obama's theological point of view was shaped by his uniquely multicultural upbringing.”
Since his mother was a secular humanist (and between the lines, sounds like an atheist) and his stepfather was a Moslem, how would that shape the faith of someone who, according to Falsani, “is unapologetic in saying he has a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ’”?
I say, appears to contradict herself, since Falsani’s column makes an “all-things-to-all men” gruel of Christianity. But on one point, she is clear:
"Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion," he says. "I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law.
"I am a great admirer of our founding charter and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.
"I think there is an enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God's mandate. I don't think it's healthy for public figures to wear religion on their sleeve as a means to insulate themselves from criticism, or dialogue with people who disagree with them."
Falsani quotes lefty activist, Roman Catholic Fr. Michael Pfleger, of St. Sabina Church on Chicago’s South Side, "I always have felt in [Obama] this consciousness that, at the end of the day, with all of us, you've got to face God. Faith is key to his life, no question about it. [It is] central to who he is, and not just in his work in the political field, but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father.... I don't think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is."
(Martin Luther King Jr. would appear to have been the greatest spiritual influence on Fr. Pfleger, who is obsessed with what he perceives to be white racism, but blind to the very real black variety. Logic is also not Fr. Pfleger’s strong suit, witness the following statement on whites and MLK: “Their anger came from the fact that he would not react to their anger and hatred.”)
So, Obama’s religious faith is and is not transcendent. Thank you, Cathleen Falsani.
Obama the Christian is a devout believer in unlimited abortion rights. He denies the existence of Hell. He came to Christianity through social organizing with activist religious. His devout Christianity derives from the secular humanist “values” his atheist mother imbued him with. He believes, with all his heart, in the separation of church and state - except when he reportedly campaigns in black churches, in violation of that separation, and of the tax code. (According to U.S. tax law, any house of worship that permits politicians to campaign within its walls, loses its tax-exempt status. But then, as another Chicago politician, Cong. Jesse Jackson Jr., announced on a radio show in October, 2000, the separation of church and state and the tax code simply don’t apply to blacks.) Obama wears his religion on his sleeve in black churches, but in dealing with the mainstream media, criticizes such behavior. Regarding Obama’s religiosity, which appeared out nowhere following his graduation from law school during his social organizing work, a line from Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass comes to mind, when he explained why Mike Ditka was not prepared for political life. “Ditka doesn't need a political life. And he hasn't spent decades planning for the scrutiny.”
Obama’s closest religious advisers -- Fr. Pfleger, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, and Illinois State Sen. James Meeks, who moonlights as the pastor of Chicago's Salem Baptist Church - may have quotes from Scripture handy, but are theologically closer to Karl Marx and black nationalism, than to Christianity. (Union Theological Seminary theologian James H. Cone, who is credited with founding liberation theology, is a black nationalist who speaks the lingo of Marxian dialectic. And as white Marxists have over the past 30 years adopted the language of race war, socialism and black supremacy have come to resemble each other. I call the common movement, which is more typically referred to as “multiculturalism,” racial socialism.)
The transcendent-non-transcendent motto the Rev. Wright has given Trinity is, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”
According to State Sen./Rev. James Meeks’ humble, personal church Web page, “Meeks’ practical and charismatic style of instruction motivates the hearer to take action and has resulted in accomplishments of miraculous proportions.” When the good Senator/Reverend is not accomplishing miracles and other feats “never before documented in history,” he serves as the executive vice president of Jesse Jackson Sr.’s National Rainbow-Push Coalition. (Why a man of God would want to be identified with Jackson’s personal den of iniquity is a question only the Rev. Meeks can answer.)
Keep in mind the parallels between Obama, his black constituency, and the Democrat Party. As black Chicagoans have suffered less and less under racism, they have become increasingly racist. Conversely, once the Democrat Party gave up its role as a pillar of Jim Crow, it increasingly has come to trade in race hoaxes. And as leading black preacher-politicians (witness Jesse Jackson Sr.’s former opposition to abortion) and white Democrat pols alike have made “Christianity” indistinguishable from the program of the left wing of the Democrat Party, so too have millions of black Christians “revised” their Bibles. And so, just as “rights” have become merely a euphemism for whatever black, “progressive,” and homosexual Democrats desire, so too has Christianity.
Apparently, the only thing that the “Christianity” of Barack Obama, Fr. Pfleger, the Rev. Wright and the Rev. Meeks forbids is voting Republican.
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[Nicholas Stix has written for the New York Post, Daily News, Insight on the News, Weekly Standard and American Enterprise. His weekly column appears at www.therant.us and other fine Web sites.]
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What are your thoughts concerning the issues raised in this commentary? Write a letter to the editor at letters@illinoisleader.com, and include your name and town.
exactly
Watch this man carefully - if the Democrat Party crashes and burns this year, it will be someone of his guile that will pick up the pieces.
Regards, Ivan
'I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law.' - The University of Chicago has appears to have dramatically lowered its standards over the last couple of decades. The one recent response I had when I challenged a totally inaccurate attack article by a UC 'history' professors on events in Iraq was a personal attack on me and my ability to understand anything but Bush and Rumsfeld lies.
How about saying he's for less government? That right there is GARBAGE.
Perhaps when he said "I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power," he was referring to the ways one can come to be a Christian (especially in light of the fact that his mother was an athiest and his stepfather was Muslim -- he certainly found an unusual way to become one). He does say that he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," buzz words for Christians, so he does seem to be following the "party line" when it comes to "the way."
While Obama and I disagree on most things, I do find the fact he can hold a conversation without Carvillian antics of smear, spin, and blantant lying about all subjects great and small refreshing.
The rhetoric thrown about in place of decent logical debate by the left is a smokescreen to hide bizarre views that won't hold up under the light of day.
Obama seems to shy away from that, for the most part. "We the People" are better served by it.
What, precisely, qualifies football coach/TV commentator Mike Ditka to be a United States Senator? Conservatives need to eschew the "cult of celebrity" that liberals so enthusiastically embrace. A better statement might be: "Their country called, and all the qualified Illinois Republican Congressmen and State Representatives preferred to keep their safe seats rather than answer."
and with jimmy carter calling bush a religious extremist.
It seems like the DNC has focus group data that suggests if they paint bush as too religious they have a chance.
IOW they DNC convetion IS bashing bush via bashing his faith.
Of course they are attacking everyone of faith in the process but they think by using Carter, Reagan, and unopposed obama they will win the argument.
(oh Mr. Ditka where are you when we need you!)
Obama sounds like a cross between New Age and Marxism to me.
When did President George W. Bush say "God told me to do it"?
Barack Obama is more slick than Slick Willie and a bigger liberal than Ted Kennedy. That's NOT good government.
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
Basically, he is appealing to Christians he thinks are too dumb to analyze what he is really saying. The liberals, secularists, etc. are on board anyway.
What a man or woman believes instructs his public policies; ergo, Mr. Obama with his secularist, atheist, Moslem upbringing, believes killing of innocents is okay; fundamentalist (read believers in the Word of God and Jesus Christ) are extreme and to be kept out of govt. He teaches Constitutional law but hasn't a clue about original intent--or believes it has passed away as the Constitution has "evolved."
I have listened to this guy, and he sounds wonderful, but so does the Communist Manifesto sound wonderful in reading. In actual practice, it is statist, totalitarian and scary--like Democrats, Barry Lynn, and company, and Mr. Obama.
vaudine
It is not a cult as much as a only shot of winning.
We have a senate race that is unopposed and the shoe in right now is a faux christian who is saying the way to be christian is to be a practicing atheist. He is also attacking bush by trying to move from "faith" to atheist.
The DNC is not moving from left to right in politics, they are moving from anti-religious to born again for the cameras.
Thanoz, I accept that you are too afraid to debate in the open, but stop playing the childish email game.
You too? LOL
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