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Thanks for the emailed get-well wishes, folks. I’m still working on that, mostly by sleeping on the job.
Would an interview with Barack Obama on religion, including his views on church-state separation, interest you? Cathleen Falsani introduces it:
At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, 2004, when I was the religion reporter (I am now its religion columnist) at the Chicago Sun-Times, I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee joint at 330 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, to interview him exclusively about his spirituality. Our conversation took place a few days after he’d clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won. We spoke for more than an hour. He came alone. He answered everything I asked without notes or hesitation. The profile of Obama that grew from the interview at Cafe Baci became the first in a series in the Sun-Times called “The God Factor,” that eventually became my first book, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (FSG, March 2006.) Because of the staggering interest in now President-Elect Obama’s faith and spiritual predilections, I thought it might be helpful to share that interivew, uncut and in its entirety, here. …
Otherwise, this is an open thread.
Lotus: Thanks for sharing this moving and enlightening article. I now feel even more sure about my vote for Obama. Hope you feel better soon.
Regarding the $700 billion bank bailout, if this link is accurate, there seems to be a disturbing moving of the goalposts. Blank cheques all round from a grateful Bush?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2008/11/crunch_a_new_phase.html
If anybody is interested in seeing the motion for downward departure, please click my link.
I’m afraid the interview is also going to confirm a lot of people in their votes *against* Obama. He’s not even pretending to be an evangelical Christian.
Nor will the non-remarks on the divinity of Christ do much for a lot of people. Most of whom are Republicans anyway.
Why weren’t the contents of this interview made public before the election?
As an Episcopalian, I have to say Senator Obama sounds like us. We’re taught not to wear it on our sleeve. We’re big on Matthew 6:1 (“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.”)
I’m an Episcopalian too, and found nothing controversial in what he said. Maybe someone can tell us what we’re missing.
I’m a Methodist and found nothing truly controversial about the full contents of this interview — in fact, Obama’s religious beliefs are much closer to my own than any in the so-called “religious right”.
So, I ask again, why wasn’t this full interview disclosed BEFORE the election? And why did Obama’s campaign managers handle the Wright and Pleuger issues by issuing statements inconsistent with what Obama said in his interview? The inconsistencies came out anyway and made the entire issue much bigger than it should have been. Being up front with all from the beginning would have been much better.
I can accept the premise that Obama attended that church for both legitimate spiritual reasons and for political reasons, without adopting all beliefs espoused by its Pastor(s). I personally would have been running for the door after some the statements made by these two pastors listed above, but I understand the political implications such an action might have meant for Obama as an aspiring politician and later politician. I am not a politician and if something displeases me, I simply do what I think is right, not caring a whole lot what others might think. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
And I also understand that one doesn’t (at least I hope he doesn’t) govern the entire nation the way one would govern a portion of the state of Illinois. And that those previous political alliances now no longer serve him as well. Such is the nature of politics.
These were fair questions and topics of inquiry in trying to understand a candidate for president. But, I haven’t really seen anything that is so bad in all of this to warrant all the initial statements from the Obama camp that were less than forthcoming about these relationships and Obama’s religious beliefs.
It isn’t exactly hidden or secret – I just Googled “Obama religion faith” and found it on the FIRST page.
Would seem that opposition research (Rove et al) was either incomplete (incompetent) OR they found it and decided said article and comments weren’t NEARLY as interesting to them as those continuous loops of the Rev. Wright tape.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/falsani/726619,obamafalsani040504.article
Well, AFOTL, the “Obama camp” can’t address his spirituality any more than my law partners can address mine. I’ve never considered “running for the door” when any person was expressing a spiritual conviction — ever. I’m not a Muslim, but if I were a tourist in a mosque when the call for prayer occurred I can’t imagine “running for the door.” I don’t believe anyone was “less than forthcoming,” even though politics in America is, yes, political. The problem arises when Bible thumping wingnuts like Sarah Palin encourage the Klan and various skinhead groups to pretend their hate messages are grounded, somewhere, in the Bible.
ThirdSouth, that out of body psycho rant of Father Michael Pfleger in the film clip that I saw would have certainly sent me running to the door. I thought the Father’s head was going to start spinning and his body levitate, all the while speaking in tongues.
And many of those sermons included in the “best of Jeremiah Wright” film clips I saw from the Trinity Church archives would have sent me running as well —- eg that the US govt. had intentionally introduced the aids virus into the black community; the GD America sermon; the post 9/11 chickens coming home to roost sermon; etc. None of those were “spiritual” convictions IMO, but instead were warped political views masquerading as “religion”.
To each his own.
That’s the point, AFOTL: you see Jeremiah Wright as a politcal hack wrapping himself in religion and I see Sarah Palin the same way. Bottom line: Religion and Government need to be separated, not blended.
And when John McCain looked at Barack Obama’s ideas and shuddered, calling them “Socialism,” I looked at them, too, and called them “The Sermon on the Mount.”
“Bottom line: Religion and Government need to be separated, not blended.”
With that, we can agree.
Indeed we can, AFOTL. I’m beginning to like agreeing with you.
OK, Obama is NOT a Christian, no matter what he actually says.
I’ve been busy as heck lately, and I haven’t had much time to glance at the headlines here and really haven’t had the time to post anything. But tonight I got put on hold on the phone, and actually had time to read the Obama interview. Lucky y’all!
Obama demonstrates only a shallow and superficial understanding of Christianity. What Obama articulates is a New Age-type belief system which is not compatible with Christianity. He gives lip-service to having a “personal relationship” with Jesus, but he does not demonstrate any belief in the divinity of Jesus, and he does not actually acknowledge the Holy Spirit. If he does not acknowledge the Triune nature of God, he is not a Christian.
Obama reveals (yet again) that he is a lying SOS. He states in the interview that he attends the 11:00 service at Jeremiah Wright’s church every week. There is no way he could have attended that church on a weekly basis and then been ignorant that Wright preaches black liberation theology (which is little more than race hate).
And what is the character of a man who, in his first press conference as President-elect of the United States, gratuitously insults 87-year-old Nancy Reagan? And for the record, it was Hilliary Clinton who engaged in seance-like channeling with Eleanor Roosevelt.
Well, Observer writes: “OK, Obama is NOT a Christian, no matter what he actually says.”
Ok, fine. Nothing Obama can say is evidence of what he believes, a standard I suspect Observer reserves for those he politically disagrees with.
So since Observer can never know what Obama believes, he should shut up about it.
By your own estimation you don’t know.
By my estimation, judging him in the way Observer judges him is quite literally unChristian.
I’ll accept Observer’s words at face value, and his words betray him.
For all you Oxford foloers (and anyone else in MS who receives Mphs PBS/WKNO-TV), a programming note of interest: (I don’t know if this will air on ETV or not)
Spotlight on Mississippi
Thursday, November 20, 8:00 p.m.
The 2008 Presidential Debate held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, brought the national press corps, and renewed national attention, to the area. What did Mississippians learn from this attention? And what did the nation learn from Mississippi?
Observer, as a friend of mine says, “who died and made you God?” You demonstrate the height of arrogance and self-righteougness to ASSume you know who is a Christian.