Let’s Talk Obama

I have to say, this whole having audio on my blog thing is a dream come true. I absolutely love it. I try to pick relevant songs…but sometimes they will just be songs I just love.

But I want to use this space today to discuss some of the controversies surrounding Obama recently.

Let’s get right into it:

1. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity, and Obama as a secret muslim/Christian Zealot/Secularist (AKA the religious kitchen sink strategy, just throw every offensive term out there and see which one will piss off the most people)

This Rev. Wright certainly has some folks worried.

Instead of trying to deal with the hate that comes out of Fox News and Glenn Beck, I’ll just try and deal with the facts.

a) Senator Obama is a bible-believing Christian. Below is his testimony, which he described in a speech to the UCC convention in 2007:

“It’s been several months now since I announced I was running for president. In that time, I’ve had the chance to talk with Americans all across this country. And I’ve found that no matter where I am, or who I’m talking to, there’s a common theme that emerges. It’s that folks are hungry for change - they’re hungry for something new. They’re ready to turn the page on the old politics and the old policies - whether it’s the war in Iraq or the health care crisis we’re in, or a school system that’s leaving too many kids behind despite the slogans.

But I also get the sense that there’s a hunger that’s deeper than that - a hunger that goes beyond any single cause or issue. It seems to me that each day, thousands of Americans are going about their lives - dropping the kids off at school, driving to work, shopping at the mall, trying to stay on their diets, trying to kick a cigarette habit - and they’re coming to the realization that something is missing. They’re deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough.

They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives. They’re looking to relieve a chronic loneliness. And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them - that they are not just destined to travel down that long road toward nothingness.

And this restlessness - this search for meaning - is familiar to me. I was not raised in a particularly religious household. My father, who I didn’t know, returned to Kenya when I was just two. He was nominally a Muslim since there were a number of Muslims in the village where he was born. But by the time he was a young adult, he was an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was one of the most spiritual souls I ever knew. She had this enormous capacity for wonder, and lived by the Golden Rule. But she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution. And as a consequence, so did I.

It wasn’t until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma. In a sense, what brought me to Chicago in the first place was a hunger for some sort of meaning in my life. I wanted to be part of something larger. I’d been inspired by the civil rights movement - by all the clear-eyed, straight-backed, courageous young people who’d boarded buses and traveled down South to march and sit at lunch counters, and lay down their lives in some cases for freedom. I was too young to be involved in that movement, but I felt I could play a small part in the continuing battle for justice by helping rebuild some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

So it’s 1985, and I’m in Chicago, and I’m working with these churches, and with lots of laypeople who are much older than I am. And I found that I recognized in these folks a part of myself. I learned that everyone’s got a sacred story when you take the time to listen. And I think they recognized a part of themselves in me too. They saw that I knew the Scriptures and that many of the values I held and that propelled me in my work were values they shared. But I think they also sensed that a part of me remained removed and detached - that I was an observer in their midst.

And slowly, I came to realize that something was missing as well - that without an anchor for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And it’s around this time that some pastors I was working with came up to me and asked if I was a member of a church. “If you’re organizing churches,” they said, “it might be helpful if you went to church once in a while.” And I thought, “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. And I heard Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright deliver a sermon called “The Audacity of Hope.” And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works.”

It is a faith that he has written about in both of his books and that has been a palpable and verifiable agent in his life. His legitimacy as a Christian and legitimacy in reaching out to people of faith, including evangelicals, has the GOP and those who profit from using religion as a bludgeon scared. So they will try and condemn Obama and his faith. Evangelicals and born-again Christians especially should be weary when the media starts to make a man’s Christian faith deplorable…they’ve been saying the same thing about us for years.

b) Trinity and Rev. Wright

As you may have noticed above, Obama didn’t join Trinity after hearing one of the 2 or 3 clips that cable news has been playing of one of Rev. Wright’s sermons…no. It was his message on “The Audacity of Hope.” A sermon that, for Obama, spoke of how, with God, anything is possible.

A few points:

I have sat in the Chapel and heard ideas that I completely disagreed with, particularly when Pastor Al Cockrell was preaching. This only happened maybe five or six times, but I would be shaking my head when he’d say something I didn’t agree with. I didn’t feel compelled to express my disagreement. I didn’t feel it was my duty. I also didn’t feel like I had to leave the Church. I didn’t feel like I had to do this because my impression of Pastor Al was much different than that of the ideas he sometimes espoused. I have an overall opinion of Pastor Al that is very positive and I believe him to be a good and decent man of God who seeks to be grounded in the word of God.

Now, had I heard Pastor Al for the first times on one of those occasions he said something I disagreed with, I probably would have been hesitant to continue at that Church.

We are all imperfect vessels.

Now, after making this point, someone made the point to me that Trinity’s website had a mission statement that was deplorable and that, sure Rev. Wright may be ruthlessly characterized, but this stuff is on their website.

I looked at the website and this is the mission statement. You can view it for yourself here.

This is the “About Us” section.

The mission statement, to me, is not extreme or out of the mainstream at all. The two references to race are saying that they are not ashamed to be a black church and that they will work to eradicate color lines.

The about us section has that word that Glenn Beck loves to use to scare folks: liberation. As far as I can tell, the Black Liberation theology, in this context, simply is a theology that connects God’s will to the liberation of Blacks out of slavery. I don’t know about you, but I believe it was God’s will that blacks were freed.

Also, as Rev. Wright writes on the Trinity website:

“To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else.”

So my first point is that, if you understand history and the Black Church, then there is nothing offensive on that website whatsoever. Let me remind you that the United Church of Christ is a 99% white denomination, and that 99% holds Trinity up as an example. Trinity is one of the most respected churches in Chicago. Rev. Wright is a respected theologian and scholar.

Secondly, the idea that members of the church are unwilling to separate the political values of their Reverend with his biblical teaching is not a sound one. Imagine if we carried that over. That would imply that every Christian who watched 700 Club voted for Giuliani. That would imply that every Catholic is against the war in Iraq. I’m only on my second point and I am having a hard time not just dismissing this “controversy” as the most manufactured, ignorant and just plain stupid thing I’ve ever heard.

However, I have more points…

Third, imagine if we held every statement of belief of a Church or personal belief of a Christian, and made all sorts of crazy insinuation and assumptions about how that person would act as a public official. For instance, my Church has a statement of belief on its website that says the following:

“We believe in the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, the everlasting conscious suffering
of the lost, and the blissful joy of the saved, which demand a literal Heaven and Hell.”
“We believe in the existence of a personal devil, the old deceiver, a liar from the beginning, who is still
working in the world to destroy the souls of men and that he and all his angels and all who receive not Christ as their Saviour will eternally perish in the lake of fire.”

“We believe that man was created in the image of God, that he sinned, and thereby incurred not only physical death, but spiritual death, which is separation from God; and that all human beings are born with a sinful nature and those who reach moral responsibility are sinners in thought, word, and deed.”

Now one can only imagine the types of assumptions about policies that one could make from those statements.

However, we know that there is a difference between the righteous reign and judgment of God and that of our own. We know that we understand humility. In other words, even if you find that a church that is almost all black supports black business and the betterment of black people, even if you find that to be surprising and reprehensible, to automatically carry those things over to Obama, even though he has never espoused such things, and THEN to carry over how he understands the mission and culture of his Church to how he understands his duties as President is foolish. He has been a U.S. Senator for years! He has a record! He won Iowa!

The choice is simple:

Do we want to choose our President by accepting the frames given to us by Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity. Do we want to accept that our choices for President have come down to a war-mongering hot-head, and a racist, elitist, manchurian candidate?

And then, like idiots, we complain about the polarization of politics. It’s our fault! We’re too lazy to accept anything other than characterizations that are made to offend our sensibilities. We have 50-50 elections not because of policy differences, but because half of the country hates unpatriotic people more than anything else and half the country hates uncompassionate, racist people more than anything else.

We have a war in Iraq, our planet is in peril, a health care crisis confronting the most vulnerable of us, open borders, an economy in recession, crime in our communities…And we’re going to pick our President on the basis of a wikipedia-level knowledge of a Church in which a candidate has attended? We’re going to pick our President based on how his last name sounds?

People, wake up!

Finally, this whole bitter thing. I could write more on it, but here is the quick opinion:

Obama likes to consider how Americans think and what problems confront them. He is an intellectual who likes to think and discuss. He considered the thoughts and lives of Americans well in the UCC speech posted above, he did so poorly in San Francisco.

It was a campaign mistake. It was a political mistake. Other than the fact that Obama thinks that our country needs economic policies that work, it has absolutely no implications about Obama or the policies he’d enact.

I am done for now.

Thanks for reading.

I hope to do my entry on the April 9 forum in the next few days.

Feel free to comment if you have anything remotely insightful to say or ask.

 

The Mission

A comment on my last post commented that I had stated what “not” to do, but asked what Christians “should” do. This is an important question and an obvious fault in my last post. Thankfully, as this is a blog, my views can be expressed and considered through the totality of this blog and not just one post.

So the question:

I would like to make a comparison.

Non-Christian academics who consider themselves biblical or Christian scholars often like to try and make the case that the New Testament contradicts itself. They make rash assumptions about the intent of the writer and consider each book on it’s own. One contradiction is that of salvation by grace and faith, and salvation through works. They point to James to support the latter and some of Paul’s writings to support the former.

However, as I know, and some of you know as well, salvation is through Jesus Christ alone. When we submit our lives to Christ we are “born again” or given a new heart. It is through this saving knowledge of Jesus Christ that our lives are changed. Good works are not the pathway to salvation, but the result of salvation. You can tell a tree by it’s fruit.

Keeping that in mind…

The heart of the problem I referred to in my last post is not one of action, but one of the heart and mind. The question is not “what mission are you on?” but “are you thinking missionally?” I believe God makes clear what mission he wants us to be on in our lives.

The problem comes when we start taking our orders from elsewhere. I may be a Democrat, but I am a card-carrying Christian. My devotion should not be confused. If you are too attached to your wallet, politics, comfort or culture to be attached to the Word of God and it’s truths, then you are not aligned with God’s will.

The problem is one of the heart.

So do not worry about whether you’re doing enough “stuff” or if you are sufficiently aligned with God’s will…A good general rule is that if you can be honest with yourself and know in your heart that you are open to accepting whatever Mission God gives you, then you are on the right track.

 

Senator Bob Casey Endorses Senator Obama

The Pro-Life Democrat from Pennsylvania endorses Senator Obama!

 

Great Obama Endorsement!

Endorsing Obama

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights. I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead. I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select. It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen. I do have confidence that the Senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend.

This endorsement may be of little note or consequence, except perhaps that it comes from an unlikely source: namely, a former constitutional legal counsel to two Republican presidents. The endorsement will likely supply no strategic advantage equivalent to that represented by the very helpful accolades the Senator has received from many of high stature and accomplishment, including most recently, from Governor Bill Richardson. Nevertheless, it is important to be said publicly in a public forum in order that it be understood. It is not arrived at without careful thought and some difficulty.

As a Republican, I strongly wish to preserve traditional marriage not as a suspicion or denigration of my homosexual friends, but as recognition of the significance of the procreative family as a building block of society. As a Republican, and as a Catholic, I believe life begins at conception, and it is important for every life to be given sustenance and encouragement. As a Republican, I strongly believe that the Supreme Court of the United States must be fully dedicated to the rule of law, and to the employ of a consistent method of interpretation that keeps the Court within its limited judicial role. As a Republican, I believe problems are best resolved closest to their source and that we should never arrogate to a higher level of government that which can be more effectively and efficiently resolved below. As a Republican, and the constitutional lawyer, I believe religious freedom does not mean religious separation or mindless exclusion from the public square.

In various ways, Senator Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view, and as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery. I regret that and I respect their disagreement. But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans. As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.

9/11 and the radical Islamic ideology that it represents is a continuing threat to our safety and the next president must have the honesty to recognize that it, as author Paul Berman has written, “draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe and with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined. . . .wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, then naïve observers might suppose.” Senator Obama needs to address this extremist movement with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America. Effective criticism of the incumbent for diverting us from this task is a good start, but it is incomplete without a forthright outline of a commitment to undertake, with international partners, the formation of a world-wide entity that will track, detain, prosecute, convict, punish, and thereby, stem radical Islam’s threat to civil order. I await Senator Obama’s more extended thinking upon this vital subject, as he accepts the nomination of his party and engages Senator McCain in the general campaign discussion to come.

About Doug Kmiec

• Douglas W. Kmiec is Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, Professor Kmiec was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.

 

Obama, Huckabee and other news

I have only liked three candidates in this Presidential campaign: Joe Biden, Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. The last two have shown in the past two days that they (along with Biden) are the only candidates who had core convictions. Mike Huckabee did so here: (Go about 3:15 in)

I am so proud of Huck.

Obama, on the other hand, gave one of the most sweeping, substantive speeches of the last 50 years in American politics. It was an honest speech that showed why he is the man to lead this country. He could have pandered to whites who wanted him to disown his pastor and leave his church, but he didn’t. He could have called white suspicion naive and ludicrous, but he didn’t. It was a remarkable speech.

I am currently planning for the big April 9 event and doing some schoolwork, so I have not been able to blog as much as I would have liked. I can tell you what, if I had time, I would be blogging on:

1. If Hillary can donate 5 million dollars to her campaign, could she donate some money to her wardrobe!? If I have to see that bee looking pantsuit one more time, I swear…!

2. By the way, about Hillary, the only campaign she still has a chance of winning is the campaign to destroy the Democratic Party.
I don’t know how many Democrats think a continuation of the failed policy in Iraq, or a third-term for Bush, is better than Senator Barack Obama in the White House.

3. I love the black church. I think it is one of the best parts of our country. However, conspiracy theories aren’t helping no one.

4. Tony Perkins and the FRC should pay more attention to the Bible and less attention to the political fortunes of the Republicans in Congress. In my latest FRC Action Alert E-mail…I was sent a paragraph of Ken Blackwell criticizing Obama’s Pastor and Obama for being in favor of a liberation philosophy and socialism. None of which, to my knowledge, were discussed in his speech. This paragraph by Ken was FRC’s response to Obama’s speech. One would think that FRC Action would rather protect the black church, which is with them on the social issues, then castigate the church because it doesn’t vote Republican. In the lead-up to April 9, I will be blogging a bit more about why the Religious Right has been led astray and if they can ever get back on a path when their eyes are on the Lord, instead of power in D.C.

5. Buffalo Sabres are going to the playoffs baby! (knock on wood)

 

Liveblogging Kinda-Super Tuesday 8:42 pm

The Ohio exits have Clinton winning Catholics and Protestants. This should not be happening. Clinton shouldn’t even be close to Obama among Protestants.

If you look at the exits, assuming they are accurate, it would be a miracle if Obama came within 5 points in Ohio. She won white men and woman, religious voters, killed him among voters over 60, those who thought NAFTA was a bad idea…I’m surprised it’s as close as it seems to be.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Rhode Island. I think RI will be more important than previously thought.