Obama's Big Give

Did Oprah write Barak's speech?? Perhaps I'm not old enough to recall the promises of previous presidential candidates, but the crowd was acting like Barak "big pockets" Obama was making all their dreams come true. The laundry list went on and on and on and then it hit me....Obama's Big Give. This campaign is turning into the greatest mass manipulation in the history of humanity and the greatest show of arrogance I've personally witnessed. Sadly, the talking points of "dignity and respect" that have so permeated this DNC were lost in his expressed desire to "reduce unwanted pregnancies." That's political-talk for avoiding the subject of abortion.

Obama Determines Embryos Worthy of Destruction, Not a Pay Grade Issue

Obama supports relaxing federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. He voted for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005, which was vetoed by President Bush. The bill would have allowed federal funding to be used for research on stem cell lines obtained from discarded human embryos originally created for fertility treatments.

It isn't above his pay grade to determine that embryos are worthy of destruction. This week will prove to be decisive in his campaign in that his inability to understand the issues has become apparent. There is no change or hope in this, this is politics as usual.

Politicizing the Pulpit: Obama's Credibility and Wright's Ordination In Question

We haven't known much about Obama, but this week we learned that he has a serious credibility problem.

No doubt Trinity UCC on Chicago's south side has been doing some marvelous practical ministry in the inner city, and I'm unaware of any attempt by media to invalidate this work. The UCC is trying to spin this story another direction. The character of Jeremiah Wright is altogether another issue, and while the United Church of Christ is a denomination that leans way to the left, it would serve them well to consider their ordination policies and revoke the ordination of Jeremiah Wright and renounce his teachings. Wright's comments reveal a racist posture that doesn't assist in healing racial divisions, rather it exploits them. Wright, in making these inflammatory statements and in propagating black theology, has brought the issue of racial divides back into the limelight even while Obama pledges to be post-racial.

Are we really suppose to believe that Obama, who regards Jeremiah Wright as a spiritual mentor and allowed him to be a member of his campaign, has been mostly unaware of Wright's views and the content of his sermons? I cannot be convinced that this is the case, given his 2 decades of membership at this church. Either Obama and his family rarely attend church and his membership and involvement is strictly on paper, or he has chosen to support the teachings of this movement. So what kind of change can we really expect from Obama given his willingness to look away from the words and character of this spiritual mentor of his? Seems like politics as usual to me.

Out of the mouth of a pastor especially, these statements bring shame to the nature and role of the church is and Wright's role in the office of pastor:

"Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain't! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."

"Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary would never know that."

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and the black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yard. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

This isn't a matter of a fallacious guilt by association, Jeremiah Wright has served as a pastor and spiritual mentor to Obama, and if Obama was unaware of the views taught during these 20 years, his ability to assess people must be called into question. At this time, Obama needs to resign his membership at Trinity in order for any evangelical to begin taking him seriously as an honest, thinking person who also happens to profess being a Christian. I realize the counter-arguments to this appeal, that Obama is running for President, not Chief Executive Theologian. But since his church has politicized the pulpit and his pastor was a member of his campaign team, and because Obama has been running his campaign on a spiritual platform, speaking freely about his faith and the role of it in his life, he owes it to himself and to his campaign to pursue a life of integrity....that can't happen with a continued association with a church that has yet to renounce the teachings of Jeremiah Wright and a congregation who was noticeably enthralled by this message of hate. The whole issue speaks to Obama's judgment and character.

Pastors, as we understand the office in Scripture, are not dictators. They are accountable to the elders whom they work with in the church and to the congregation. We are called to be Bereans, people who are always studying the Scriptures and testing the teachings of our leadership against the testimony of Scripture. The Bereans of Trinity UCC need to step up......if there are any.

It seems inevitable that we are going to have a democrat in the White House in 2009. If it is going to be Obama, I would hope that he would give us a better idea of what to expect out of him - or perhaps he has and we really need to worry about his integrity and real (in)ability to lead. At this point, it looks like politics as usual, but even worse as he uses his faith as a way to shroud his views. At least with Hillary, what you see is what you get, at least moreso than with Obama.

Obama's Public Religion: Part 2

On February 24th, I posted a review of Obama's Audacity of Hope. In the book, he writes,

I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union…nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount. (p. 222)

So I was quite surprised to see the shock in the news about Obama saying just this in a Q & A session with voters in Nelsonville, Ohio. According to the Baptist Press, a local pastor asked Obama how he plans to win over evangelical voters when they disagree with him on moral issues. Obama's response?

"I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other...I don't think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial, then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That's my view. But we can have a respectful disagreement on that." HT: Baptist Press

It's apparent that if Obama is nothing else, at least he's consistent. But his response never answered the question of the local pastor for he has no intention of winning over evangelical voters any more than he plans to cross party lines to place nice with conservatives.

What is quite interesting about this exchange with the pastor is that Obama seems unable to separate his politics from his religious beliefs, the basis for his view of civil unions is articulated in a purely Christian terminology. It is unfair for him to answer clergy in a way that he would not permit clergy to answer for themselves in the public square.

Barak Obama's Revenge of Conscience

In his recent speech before the UCC convention, Barak Obama instigated a powerful, yet philosophically incoherent, attack on religious people whose concern for human dignity manifests itself in a way different from Obama and others on the left. It was a powerful argument because he focused his listeners on important issues that should matter to each of us – the environment, poverty, disease, etc….helping his listeners to conclude that prolife conservatives care very little about these issues and believe the only issue that matters is abortion and gay marriage. Perhaps “deceptive” best describes Obama’s speech.

From the start, his speech attempted to build a case against prolife conservatives for 2 primary reasons: 1) he would prefer we let him define which human dignity issues are worthy of our time and investment and 2) prolife conservatives tend not to be afraid of expressing their arguments for human dignity and the sanctity of human life within the framework of the Christian worldview. He believes religious language does not belong in the public square despite the fact that every person is driven by a particular worldview. Yet he calls for religious discourse. I don’t get it.

Obama’s bottom line is that we who identify ourselves as conservative are exploitive of what divides or separates us from those who happen to think its fine to destroy human life in the earliest of stages. By not abandoning our views on human dignity and the sanctity of all human life, we have somehow hijacked faith and religious discourse in the public square. It is all too clear that Barak Obama only believes in the dignity of some human beings – only those who have been fortunate enough to be born – and that by virtue of disagreeing with him, we have hijacked religion.

Obama had an opportunity to bring people together and promote a consistent life ethic. Instead, he chose to embrace and promote the caricature of conservatives, that supposedly we believe that the only issues worthy of our concern are those that relate to the unborn and the make-up of the family. Certainly it is true that no one person or organization can sufficiently speak to every issue facing America and the rest of the world, but we can be thankful for the different ministries God has given to each of us. Being a prolife conservative does mean I disagree passionately with pro-choice liberals (and if you must call that divisive, so be it), but that does not logically necessitate that I believe protecting the environment is unimportant – and I’m terribly frustrated that this needs to even be explained. On the flip side, however, do not be deceived. Obama’s embrace of a handful of evangelicals like Rick Warren does not mean he is abandoning his position on the issues he believes we are exploiting. His one-sided expectations illustrate that he is guilty of what he attributes to prolife conservatives. Speaking out against Obama’s politicizing of religion is a moral commitment because his exploitive tactics offend my conscience.