I See Your Mike Huckabee And Raise You A Barack Obama
Remember this? Mike Huckabee’s now infamous Christmas ad with the “hidden” cross in the background? Well, check out this puppy on the left from Barack Obama - Hat Tip: Holy Coast. So much for “hidden.”
What I truly do not understand is after the shellacking he has taken for Jeremiah Wright, why he would want to invoke religious imagery at this point. Unless, of course, he wishes to de-link Wright and religion, but that I think would remove all restraint in terms of Wright criticism.
But worse, where is the heat over this? Now, far be it from me to defend Mike Huckabee, but he took a quite the hits over that Christmas ad, and by all appearances, it was an accident. Nothing accidental about this.
Oh wait, I forgot, it is not really about the invocation of religious imagery; it’s about whether the invocation comes from a Republican or a Democrat. Ugh!
Lowell: It is always amusing and interesting to remember the standards that were imposed on Mitt Romney and then apply them to Barack Obama. How do you think Romney would have fared if he had put out a photo of himself standing in front of the famous Mormon Tabernacle with a caption describing how he tries to do God’s will? Think about it. The double standard is almost overwhelming at times.
Evangelicals Arguing . . .
On Faith asks its contributers:
Some Christian leaders issued An Evangelical Manifesto last week to depoliticize the term ‘evangelical.’ “We evangelicals are defined theologically, and not politically, socially or culturally,” they said. In your mind, what is the definition of an evangelical?
Needless to say, answers are all over the map. So . . .
McCain Adds To The Confusion
Continuing his effort to reach out to evangelicals, John McCain had a private meeting with Joel Osteen last weekend. The two met in a Houston hotel on Saturday following a finance event McCain had there.
Osteen, while immensely popular, is the subject of some derision in religiously serious Evangelical circles. I will not bore you with the theological details, but every time McCain hooks up with an “Evangelical” he looks like he is playing horseshoes - remember, “close counts” in horseshoes.
Which demands the question - why not a Mormon?
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One Response to “I See Your Mike Huckabee And Raise You A Barack Obama”
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coltakashi on 15 May 2008 at 12:25 pm #
I see Barack Obama has decided to alter the formula of St. Paul in 1st Corinthians Chapter 13 and substitute “Change” for “Charity” in the triplet of “faith, hope and charity.” I would think that anyone who is seriously committed to a faith in Christ and who believes in the message taught by Paul would resent that message being coopted and altered in order to help a politician gain power, rather than for its original objective of bringing about personal commitment to Christ and charity and love toward the rest of humanity.
The message of the ad appears to be that Obama is a new apostle, a new prophet, even a new messiah. Since Obama already explained that he doesn’t take seriously Paul’s teachings against homosexual activity by Christians, preferring a wishy washy view toward homosexuality that he asserts has the authority of the Sermon on the Mount (which is actually pretty uptight about even sexual thoughts outside marriage being a sin), we see Obama here emerging as his own pastor, a minister of his own gospel in his own right (no longer needing to serve as a disciple of Jeremiah Wright).
Indeed, is the “Faith” and the “Hope” a faith in God and a hope for salvation through Christ, or a faith in the “arm of the flesh” and a hope for government to eliminate the need for reliance on God? Instead of the reader being challenged to perform acts of charity, Obama promises “change”. But this is not a change in the reader, a transformation into a state of being closer to God, but rather a change in the circumstances of the world, a change to make the world accommodate the desires of the reader. After all, it is Obama who is going to make the changes. All the reader is asked to do is vote for him.
If this is not a false gospel, I don’t know what is.