Pagan Problem: Obama’s lofty religious rhetoric fails to address liberalism’s disastrous effort..

National Review Online ^ | 08/22/2008 | Michael Knox Beran

[iowamark]

Barack Obama talks a lot about faith. Curious as to how his spiritual inspirations might concretely affect his politics, I went to his website and clicked on “faith.” I found the usual boilerplate about “the global battle against AIDS” and a call — now familiar to connoisseurs of the Obama style — for “deeper, more substantive discussion.” I also found an exhortation to “religious people” to translate their “concerns” into “universal values.”

Few values can be more universal than that of human freedom. Few have historically been as intertwined with religious sensibility. Yet Obama, the candidate of faith, has done little to oppose modern liberalism’s embrace of a secularizing agenda that has weakened the power of religion to promote the “universal value” of freedom at home and around the world.

The free institutions we enjoy in the West today are in part a by-product of the traditions of Judaism and Christianity, which insist on the innate dignity of each and every human life. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him,” says the Book of Genesis. Even the weakest among us, Christ taught in the Beatitudes, has value in the eyes of God.

Hundreds of years passed before the West translated this belief into political institutions that recognize that all human beings are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

[iowamark]

“”What liberalism needs is a leader who recognizes that liberals have been too long suckled in an outworn secularism, and who offers instead a program of creative re-engagement with a spiritual culture that inspired the painting of Giotto and the poetry of Dante, the Moses of Michelangelo and his Sistine frescoes, the cantatas of Bach and the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven.

For all his faith-talk, Barack Obama is not that leader.””

[SECURE AMERICA]

(Barack Obama talks a lot about faith. Curious as to how his spiritual inspirations might concretely affect his politics, I went to his website and clicked on “faith.” I found the usual boilerplate about “the global battle against AIDS” and a call — now familiar to connoisseurs of the Obama style — for “deeper, more substantive discussion.” I also found an exhortation to “religious people” to translate their “concerns” into “universal values.” )

1.global battle against aids
2. deeper more substantive discussion
3. translate their concerns into universal values
DON’T YOU JUST WANT TOP STEP UP AND SMACK PEOPLE THAT TALK LIKE THIS?? It really ticks me off when people flap their lips but really don’t end up saying anything that has meaning. Oh, that’s right we are talking about Obama........

[wintertime]

Nor is it a necessary condition: witness India and Japan.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

India's institutions rest upon the foundation of a Christian Raj. It was freed from colonial rule in only in my lifetime.

Christian soldiers gave Japan a very significant attitude adjustment, and, as a modern state is only as old as I am.

[Hawthorn]

> To his credit, Obama supports faith-based initiatives that counteract the sterility of secularism <

Well, maybe not:

Saint Barack says faith-based institutions that accept federal money must also hire people who don’t share those institutions’ religion-based moral priciples. I should think very few faith-based institutions can accept federal aid with such “strings” attached.

In other words, Barry Lord Obama supports faith-based intitiatives only when the receipients are willing to drop their faith!

So the Obamessiah doesn’t support faith-based initiatives at all. His claimed “support” is merely another of those hedged positions for which he is becoming so well known.

[The Annoited One’s left hand taketh away what his right hand hath given!]

[Christian4Bush]

mark

[phillyfanatic]

The Evangelical who was supposed to speak at the DNC Convention left..........

[goldstategop]

A society that doesn't believe in God and in moral absolutes is a society that believes in nothing and has no hope and confidence tomorrow will be any better. No wonder liberals are full of doom and gloom prognostication.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[NutCrackerBoy]

Excellent piece. Obama’s speeches have been attractive and refreshing in the way faith is embraced. But it is Lip Service to the nth degree — he supports not a single shred of policy that would slow down let alone reverse the ongoing exploitation of the rule of law by secular fundamentalists.