Barack Obama, Man of Faith [from his Senate campaign]

"I am a Christian.… So, I have a deep faith. I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.

"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 for Illinois Barack Obama in a campaign contribution by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani.

Obama’s supporters include not only constituents and corporations giving him monetary contributions, but scores of alleged journalists who see their job as doing everything in their power to get him elected. As Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass observed, “A conservative Ditka candidacy would also have forced Barack Obama, the anointed one, to actually campaign for the Senate rather than wait for more air kisses from Hollywood liberals and the Eastern press, the Midwestern press, the Western press.”

Obama, an Illinois state senator representing the South Side of Chicago, is in fact a far-left politician who -- as I’ve previously shown -- seeks to force ever more socialist and racist laws and programs on the American people.

Meanwhile, Obama’s media devotees have launched such a successful crusade on his behalf, that in what took on the airs of a coronation, just before the late July Democratic National Convention in Boston, he was chosen by the Kerry campaign to be a keynote speaker. And he acquitted himself stupendously. Between the lines, one can read Obama’s media cadres going from touting the biracial (half-white, half-black) candidate as potentially “only the third African-American to take a seat in the Senate since Reconstruction” (the New York Times’ Bob Herbert), to seeing in him potentially the nation’s second “black” president. It is worth examining the spiritual world of this rising national player. After emphasizing the transcendence of Obama’s Christianity, Cathleen 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 (the late Barack Obama Sr., a Moslem-raised but non-religious Kenyan economist, deserted his family when his son was only two years old), 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 a 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. [Actually, Obama is not a law professor, but a “senior lecturer.” As Chicago Sun-Times columnist http://www.suntimes.com/output/sweet/cst-edt-sweet081.html>Lynn Sweet has pointed out, and I know from six-and-a-half years as a full-time, college adjunct lecturer, “In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles.” As Sweet also notes, however, Obama’s misrepresentation of his academic position is the least of his credibility problems.]

"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 campaigns in black churches, in violation of that separation, and in violation 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 the radio talk show Nashville This Morning 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, attacks the same behavior, at least as far as white, conservative Christians are concerned. The only recognizably Christian position Obama takes is his opposition to same-sex marriage, due to the “religious connotations” of marriage. (“Religious connotations”? What about “civic religion”; the “separation of church and state”; the “enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God's mandate”? Don’t ask.) This is surely due to the fact that blacks are the racial/ethnic group most adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, and Obama does not want to rile the one voter bloc on which his candidacy is most dependent. However, I would expect his position on same-sex marriage to begin “evolving” around, say, … November 3. Once Obama is safely ensconced in the U.S. Senate, he knows that his black base will stick by him, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse. Then he will doubtless begin the sort of “education” of the Christian black electorate in matters of same-sex marriage, which black leaders earlier conducted in the matter of abortion. Regarding Obama’s religiosity, which appeared out of nowhere during his social activist work, following his graduation from law school, a line from Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass comes to mind, when the latter 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 always 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 having founded liberation theology, is a black nationalist who speaks the lingo of Marxian dialectic. And as white Marxists have over the past 40 years adopted the language of race war, socialism and black supremacy have increasingly 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,” or 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.

Now that Obama has a Republican opponent in Alan Keyes, Obama’s media acolytes are working hard to discredit Keyes, a talk-show host who is a former ambassador, and presidential and senatorial candidate. Meanwhile, Obama, who when Jack Ryan was his opponent wanted six debates, has no desire to debate Keyes. Obama & Co. had better stick to their new script or Keyes, a brilliant man who knows the Constitution better than “Professor” Obama does, and whose own Christian faith comes not from Karl Marx or black nationalism (or possibly Unitarian Universalism), but from Christianity, might put some hard questions to Barack Obama.

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New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix has written for Toogood Reports, Middle American News, the New York Post, Daily News, American Enterprise, Insight, Chronicles, Newsday and many other publications. His recent work is collected at www.geocities.com/nstix and http://www.thecriticalcritic.blogspot.com.

I don’t doubt it.

My point is only that Jesus was pretty explicit in telling how to be saved. Further, Paul admonished those who added their own requirements to “get to Heaven” in Galatians.

Today, lots of people try to make the Bible and Christ fit their own desires and lifestyles. Often, it requires tearing out a lot of pages of scripture. (I am not saying you are doing this)

“am a Christian.… So, I have a deep faith. I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

Many paths? Apparently his brand of Christianity and Bible are lacking John 14:6 (NIV)

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I believe the John quote absolutely and completely, but the mainline denominations, and most especially the Episcopalian leadership say the same. Obama is quoting them Remember the “God cannot be contained in a little box” quote of the leader on one?? She then went on to say what is quoted above.

Follow-up question: Assuming, as I do, that there is an unfathomably rich variety of life on the billions and billions of stars, in their billions and billions of galaxies in the Universe, and also assuming that the beings on these planets are souls living out physical lives as we do -- Do you think that the Old Testament, and the story of Jesus of Nazareth, would make any sense at all to any of these divine beings?

I am probably in the minority here, but I consider Jesus and his disciples to be a scenario, a symbolic scenario, set up as a lesson for the people of Earth in order to better understand the nature of reality and of God. And it was played out in a way that makes sense only in the context of Planet Earth. Think of all of the things that would be impossible to translate for a being, a divinely created being, of another planet. It is all rooted in this planet; even from the very beginning with the Snake (what's a snake? No reference point) and the fruit (what's a fruit? Again, no reference point).

You might think that all of this is a bit far out, but for me it's food for thought. I consider it to be an almost 100% certainty that souls exist in physical form not just on this little blue ball that inhabits an obscure end of a far arm of the spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way, but they exist on a mind-bogglingly innumerable number of other worlds, in an equally mind-bogglingly innumerable number of unique forms.

So if I believe that, then it seems to me that I have to believe that those beings have other such stories, other such scenarios, other symbols, other Scriptures, other Bibles (or whatever they might call them and in whatever form, not necessarily a book (which is made of Earth wood and which may not have an analog on another world), but in whatever form a "Bible" might take there. And those other Bibles will have radically different versions of the path to God. God will have provided for them a story that makes sense within their unique context.

If this is too "New Age" (I hate that term) for you, then oh well, sorry. I'm not a weirdo, honest!! :)

But it is something that I've pondered once in a while.

“Today, lots of people try to make the Bible and Christ fit their own desires and lifestyles. Often, it requires tearing out a lot of pages of scripture. (I am not saying you are doing this)”

I’ll certainly agree with that.

But I think that even without tearing out any pages, people interpret those pages radically differently from other people. And each thinks that their interpretation is the “Truth.” So you end up with tons of denominations and “factions” if you will.

Interesting. I have lots of close friends who went to Christian colleges and like to debate finer points of theology. I won’t say that I don’t think about some of them sometimes, but I have decided that if something theological is not central to my faith, i.e. pertaining to salvation, I am not going to spend much time talking or thinking about it. I feel like that takes away from my time and ability to lead others to Christ.

As for the various interpretations and denominations: I think lots of people don’t actually read the Word, but take what their denominations say as the gospel. If they want to worship and practice a certain way, that’s fine by me. If they want to bastardize the Word of God, that isn’t. Luckily, I will never have to stand before the Throne of God and answer for those people.

If they want to worship and practice a certain way, that’s fine by me. If they want to bastardize the Word of God, that isn’t.

Ah, but where is the delineation between interpreting Scripture in a certain way and worshiping in a certain way, and bastardization? Where is the line drawn, exactly?

I don't have an answer to that, but that is precisely why there are so many denominations, many of whom do not think that other denominations are "correct." It's why Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, to break from Catholicism. And then it's why the CLC Lutherans think the LFW Lutherans are doing it wrong and practicing "fake" Christianity. On and on it goes.

Anyway...I think your approach is perfectly good and fine. I don't expect anyone to go along with some of the admittedly more out-of-the-box stuff I bring up...but it's fun to do so every once in a while. Go with the Spirit, sir.

I think the core, salvation, is pretty black and white. Beyond that, I think so much is about personal preference.

I always tell people to ask themselves:
a. Is what my church teaches Biblical?
b. If what we are teaching/doing is not out of the Bible, why do we do it?
c. If we are doing things according to the Bible, am I comfortable with the way we worship?

Jesus never intended everyone to worship Him in one particular way, but I do believe that He intended everyone to come to Him in the same way.

There are churches of many stripes that preach salvation, and there are many churches of those same stripes that do not. It depends on who is in charge.

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