Bush backer pens pro-Obama book - Faith of Barack Obama

The conservative Evangelical biographer of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay has moved on to a new subject: Barack Obama. And his new book, due out this summer, may lend credibility to Senator Obama's bid to win Evangelical Christian voters away from the Republican Party.

The forthcoming volume from Stephen Mansfield, whose sympathetic "The Faith of George W. Bush" spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2004, is titled "The Faith of Barack Obama." Its tone ranges from gently critical to gushing, and the author defends Obama-and even his controversial former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright-from conservative critics, and portrays him as a compelling figure for Christian voters.

"Young Evangelicals are saying, 'Look, I'm pro-life but I'm looking at a guy who's first of all black-and they love that; two, who's a Christian; and three who believes faith should bear on public policy," Mansfield, who described himself as a conservative Republican, said in a telephone interview. "They disagree with him on abortion, but they agree with him on poverty, on the war."

His book, provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher, focuses more on Obama's religious journey than his electoral prospects.

"For Obama, faith is not simply political garb, something a focus group told him he ought to try. Instead, religion to him is transforming, lifelong, and real," Mansfield writes, going on to compare Obama favorably to Christian Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who he says erected a "wall of separation" between their religion and their governance.

By contrast, "Obama's faith infuses his public policy, so that his faith is not just limited to the personal realms of his life, it also informs his leadership," Mansfield writes.

The book is published by Thomas Nelson, the world's largest Christian publisher. It's due out August 5. "The Faith of Barack Obama" is expected to retail in Christian outlets and the Wal-Mart chain of stores, as well as secular bookstores. A motivational speaker and former pastor, Mansfield is the author of several books on faith as well as the co-author of former House Republican powerhouse Tom DeLay's 2007 book "No Retreat, No Surrender," a defense of his tarnished legacy sprinkled with fierce attacks on his opponents and on liberal causes.

Mansfield writes that Obama "is unapologetically Christian and unapologetically liberal." But he writes that in substance and in style, Obama holds an appeal to Evangelicals that Senator John McCain may lack.

He contrasted Obama's relative "fluency" with the language of religion-his campaign has outlined a pitch to the "Joshua Generation," a common term in Christian circles for younger Evangelicals-with the approach of his Republican rival.

"The McCain campaign is pretty clumsy when it comes to religion," he said, noting McCain's courtship, then renunciation, of two prominent Evangelical pastors, John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

In his Fathers Day speech at a Chicago church Sunday, Obama again spoke explicitly of his personal Christianity: "We do what we can to build our house upon the sturdiest rock, and for me that means building that house on the foundation of Jesus Christ."

Mansfield's book validates Obama's attempt-which began in earnest in his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention-to provide a compelling public face to the nascent "Religious Left." In that speech, he proclaimed that "we worship an awesome God in the blue states," and Mansfield tracks his continuing attempts to contest the Republican hold on white Evangelical voters.

One notable moment came in 2006 when Obama appeared at Reverend Rick Warren's megachurch beside GOP Senator Sam Brownback.

Obama, Mansfield writes, "made it clear to all that he [will] not be moved from his rightful place in the Christian fold."

Obama's Christianity, however, has been under attack on two fronts this campaign season. The first is from a false, but widely held, belief that he is a Muslim. Mansfield dismisses that charge, then dwells at length on Obama's controversial church, Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.

Mansfield said in the interview that he entered Trinity having heard "that Obama's church was a cult, something un-Christian, that Reverend Wright was a nut," but emerged with the view that it is "a pretty solid Christian church."

Though Mansfield writes of some jarringly radical features of the black liberation theology from which Trinity is descended, he concludes that what it offers is the "'born-again, new birth, blood-washed, Spirit-empowered Chrstianity' that Evangelicals know."

"Few sermons this good will be preached anywhere in America on this Sunday morning," he says of the sermon he heard from Trinity's current pastor, Rev. Otis Moss.

Mansfield's book is addressed to Evangelical readers, and it raises some questions about Obama's own faith, including his willingness to see contradictions in the bible, his belief that religions other than Protestant Christianity provide other "paths" to a "higher power," and his doubts about the afterlife.

There are also passages in Mansfield's book that may give Obama's secular supporters pause. In particular, a theme from his book on Bush—the suggestion that the president's rise was itself an act of God-reappears in his coverage of Obama. He approvingly quotes Obama's old rival Rep. Bobby Rush saying that Obama's Senate win was "divinely ordained."

"Increasingly, words such as called, chosen, and anointed are being used of Obama," he writes.

Despite Mansfield's praise of the candidate, however, and his view that Obama may win over large numbers of younger Evangelical voters, the author also demonstrates the limits to the Democrats' appeal.

Mansfield said he will vote against Obama in November for a single reason: "Because I'm pro-life."

Obama's "faith" is in revolutionary communism. For 20 friggin years he was part of Wright's "church"!

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html

From the Louis Farrakhan/Nation of Islam website, Final Call...
Malik Zulu Shabazz, chairman of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBPP):
"We are happy today to be standing side by side with the Nation of Islam. We believe, like the Nation of Islam and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad believe, in a nation of our own. We believe in a Black first philosophy and a Black Liberation Theology. We don’t worry about the criticism. We love all of those who labored in the Panther Party from the ’60s. Many are with us today."
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1858.shtml

___________________________________________________________

From the Maoist Internationist Movement:
[1960s] Black Panther Party [BPP] Archives
From the article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROES

excerpt...

"On May 1st, May Day [1969], the day of the gigantic Free Huey rally, two of Alioto's top executioners vamped on the brothers from the Brown Community who were attending to their own affairs. These brothers, who are endowed with the revolutionary spirit of the Black Panther Party defended themselves from the racist pig gestapo.

Pig Joseph Brodnik received his just reward with a big hole in the chest. Pig Paul McGoran got his in the mouth which was not quite enough to off him.

The revolutionary brothers escaped the huge swarm of pigs with dogs, mace, tanks and helicopters, proving once again that "the spirit of the people is greater than the man's technology."

To these brothers the revolutionary people of racist America want to say, by your revolutionary deed you are heroes, and that you are always welcome to our camp."

Source: Maoist Internationist Movement
Article: REVOLUTIONARY HEROS (May 11, 1969):
http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/bpp/index.html

Louis Farrakhan, at the Millions More Movement rally in DC, Oct 15, 2005: "...what Mao Tse Tung did was, he went to the cultural community, and they [Farrakhan spreads his arms beneficently] accepted his idea."..."Mao Tse Tung ... had a billion people whose lives he had to transform."..."the idea of Mao Tse Tung became the idea of a billion people, and China became a world power on the base of the culture and the arts community. If we had a ministry of art and culture in every city we'd create this movement [in the U.S.]."
Source: http://thedrunkablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/communist-plot-noted.html

Louis Farrakhan, Santiago de Cuba, February, 1998: "There is not a member of the black masses in the United States who is not proud of the example set by Cuba and its revolution, with Comandante Fidel at its head"
Source: http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/farakhan21898.html#says

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Obama's pastor and ~~spirtual advisor~~ "crazy uncle" of more than 20 years, honors "Honorable" Minister Louis Farrakhan with the "Jeremiah A. Wright Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer Award" at the 2007 Trumpet Gala held at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
[it appears the original video was removed, but this one is identical to it]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW2OhkZ0RSg

Louis Farrakhan, at the annual Saviours' Day celebration in Chicago, Feb. 25, 2008: "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better"..."If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4337417

Liberation theology started in the Catholic church.

Catholics for Marx
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD

From Jeff Head's website...

One notable quote from Cone describing his Black Liberation Theology is as follows:

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love." - "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, by William R Jones, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).

http://www.jeffhead.com/blacklibtheology.htm

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