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To: Gelato

This is trash.

The fellow has always been open about his family's background. See for instance the Chicago Sun Times:



So, I have a deep faith," Obama continues. "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."

It's perhaps an unlikely theological position for someone who places his faith squarely at the feet of Jesus to take, saying essentially that all people of faith -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone -- know the same God.

That depends, Obama says, on how a particular verse from the Gospel of John, where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me," is heard.

Obama's theological point of view was shaped by his uniquely multicultural upbringing. He was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white mother who came from Protestant Midwestern stock and a black African father who hailed from the Luo tribe of Kenya.

Obama describes his father, after whom he is named, as "agnostic." His paternal grandfather was a Muslim. His mother, he says, was a Christian.

"My mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve," he says. "We'd go to church for Easter. She wasn't a 'church lady.' "

In his 1993 memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama describes his mother as "a lonely witness for secular humanism."

"My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess, a faith that she would refuse to describe as religious; that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny," he says in the book.

When he was 6 years old, after his parents divorced, Obama moved with his mother and her new husband -- a non-practicing Muslim -- to Indonesia, where he lived until he was 10 and attended a Roman Catholic school.

"I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country, so I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and, at night, you'd hear the [Muslim] prayer call," Obama recalls. "My mother was a deeply spiritual person and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions and talk to me about them.

"Her view always was that underlying these religions was a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself, but also for the greater good."

Obama earned a degree in political science from New York's Columbia University in 1983 and in 1991 graduated magna cum laude with a law degree from Harvard University. Since 1993, he has been a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.


http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-spirit05.html


70 posted on 08/11/2004 2:35:50 PM PDT by Wisconsin
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To: Wisconsin
I'm rooted in the Christian tradition.

Interesting. He doesn't actually say there that he is a Christian.

80 posted on 08/11/2004 2:39:03 PM PDT by B Knotts
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To: Wisconsin

Your quoting our liberal rag?

Why thats like saying the NYT is gospel!

LOL!


167 posted on 08/11/2004 3:26:44 PM PDT by JustPiper (Obama- No More Free Ride to the Illinois Senate !!!)
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To: Wisconsin; All

[1] http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-spirit05.html
[2] http://therant.us/staff/stix/barack_obama_bob_herbert_and_race_politics.htm
[3] http://www.catholicnewworld.com/archive/cnw2000/0409> /inter_0409.htm
[4] http://www.cabn.org/archives/2004/030704barackobama.html>
[5] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0407150288jul15,1,6875475.column
[6] http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Iraq-IQ-Test-Wright23feb03.htm
[7] http://www.sbcoc.org/pastor.asp
[8] http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200406%5CSPE20040630a.html
[9] http://gargaro.com/lifequotes.html
[10] http://www.illinoisleader.com/columnists/columnistsview.asp?c=17784


168 posted on 08/11/2004 3:28:33 PM PDT by JustPiper (Obama- No More Free Ride to the Illinois Senate !!!)
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