"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
The pot says something about the kettle.
Religion and Ethics Newsweekly really brief discussion about Obama’s Evangelical meet.
RCP Blog thinks he has an uphill pull. To say the least.
A Mormon politician who has clearly not learned the lessons of the Romney campaign.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!
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Sorry, no Marvin Gaye here, just religion and presidential politics.
Apparently, it got a little strange.
“They focused on abortion, gay marriage, and then Franklin Graham tried to get Sen. Obama saved,” said the Rev. Eugene Rivers of Boston.
[...]
“His genuine faith seemed obvious,” Cizik said.
This is wholly inappropriate. The purpose of such a meeting is not to judge, or change, the salvation status or the genuineness of faith or ANY candidate – even one I disagree with as fully as I disagree with Obama. Such a discussion strikes me as a variation of the same game that was played with Romney. And this unarguably inside our faith – none of the questions about a heterodox faith that plagued Romney are at play here.
Such questioning is just wrong – unless, of course, Obama called for personal counseling, in which case I ought not be reading about it in the press.
And the worst part? Once again we Evangelicals come out looking the fools.
Speaking of Obama – about that Evangelical support he has been getting….
OH YEAH! On Faith asks this week:
Hindu groups have protested that “The Love Guru,” the latest Mike Myers movie, exposes their faith to ridicule. Where is the line between acceptable humor about religion and offensive disrespect?
Apparently, there are a little over a million Hindu’s in the US. As compared to roughly six million Mormons. Yet in the last two years has anybody been worried about”acceptable humor” with the Mormons? If the idea is not to offend, it seems to me the odds of offending someone in a group of six million, versus one million are much higher. So why now, and why this?
Could it be because other agendas are at play? You know, maybe political ones?
Lowell adds: Politics is probably part of it. So, definitely, is political correctness. Mormonism is perceived as a religion of Anglo-Saxons, and is thus not subject to any restrictions imposed by the PC police. (Never mind that half the membership of the Church is Hispanic.) Hindus are generally not Anglo-Saxons (an understatement, to be sure) so it is not acceptable to ridicule them in the entertainment media. But when you add Romney’s white, Anglo-Saxon status to his Mormonism and then to his wealth and then to his conservative Republican ideology, you have a man for whom no insult or ridicule is out of bounds. Remember the reporter who went sneaking around the bathroom of Romney’s home to see what his underwear was like, and actually reported on that?
. . . in “praise” of Mormon organization. Just an aside from this Evangelical – the Mormon lay leadership style is what I most admire about them.
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This from Ben Smith in Politico today:
Two Muslim women at Barack Obama‘s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.
There were, of course, the usual apologies and harrumphing on all sides. Smith continues:
[F]or Obama, the old-fashioned image-making contrasts with his promise to transcend identity politics and to embrace all elements of America. The incidents in Michigan, which has one of the largest Arab and Muslim populations in the country, also raise an aspect of his campaign that sometimes rubs Muslims the wrong way: The candidate has vigorously denied a false, viral rumor that he himself is Muslim. But the denials seem to some at times to imply that there is something wrong with the faith, though Obama occasionally adds that he means no disrespect to Islam.
In other words, Obama is deathly afraid of seeming to be associated with Islam – which is not even his own faith. Kind of reminds of me how Romney was pushed into a similar aversion to being associated with his own life-long faith. Obama, of course, gets away with lots more than Romney ever did. Could Romney have ever spoken at a church or used religious iconography in his literature?
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The UK’s Guardian (certainly the most openly liberal paper in the UK and perhaps Europe) writes about the reluctance of Evangelicals to support McCain. The Dallas Morning News looks at the same story out of the Texas Republican convention and arrives at a slightly, but only slightly, different conclusion. USAToday says the religious right fears Obama because he excites the religious left. Politico looks at it from a biographer’s point of view. Finally, the Denver Post looks at general Dem outreach to religious voters.
My perspective is a bit different than all this. It is fair to say the Evangelical right are not all that fired up about McCain, but alternately, the Evangelical left are no more fired up about Obama than they were about Bill Clinton. That said, the Evangelical right are going to vote for McCain; there is no swing here that I can see. In other words, we are talking about a small slice of the Evangelical spectrum that is actually at play here, there is no major shift politically inside Evangelicalism taken as a whole.
But then, perception often defines “reality” in political races. How about Mormons, they “shifting?” I mean “their guy” lost and all.
Lowell answers the call: I have only anecdotal evidence to offer. After Romney withdrew, I heard a number of my fellow Mormons who had been Romney supporters express both admiration for Obama and a desire to look into voting for him. They were angry at McCain and furious with Huckabee, and Obama seemed new and fresh, the young father of a beautiful young family and an articulate, attractive wife. Sort of a younger African-American version of Mitt Romney, at least on the surface.
Everyone I knew who was in that category has recoiled from Obama’s positions on issues important to them.They’re going to hold their noses and vote for McCain. My guess is, that’s what has happened with virtually all Mormon Romney supporters who took a look at Obama.
By the way, I know plenty of Mormon Democrats who intend to vote for Obama. But they were never Romney supporters.
Remember “Internet Evangelist” Bill Keller? Well:
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign team is scrambling to do damage control in the wake of the national story two weeks ago when the world’s leading Internet evangelist Bill Keller of Liveprayer, questioned in a widely distributed Op-ed article, YouTube video, and Daily Devotional to his 2.4 million subscribers whether Senator Obama was really a Christian.
Now, this is a press release — there has been no reaction whatsoever from the Obama camp, and certainly nothing that would rise to the level of “scrambling to do damage control.” It seems that our old friend Keller is willing to hurl religious insults at just about anybody if it will garner him attention. While Barack Obama would not get my vote if he paid for it, it is simply out of bounds to declare a man “not a Christian” – particularly when his theology agrees with yours on the so-called essentials – a mark of Keller’s true agenda.
But since we are in the business of attaching labels, especially negative ones, I have one for Mr. Keller. “MEDIA WHORE.”
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There is a book makig the round in Christian blogging circles – “Jesus For President”:
Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals
by Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw And FriendsA different kind of campaign.
A different kind of party.
A different kind of Commander in Chief.Amid all the buzz of politics and elections, Jesus for President is a refreshing reminder that our ultimate hope lies not in partisan political options but in the Jesus who gave his life for us. Politics for ordinary radicals who want to love the world into the kingdom of God.
Now there is a message I can get behind, but is this really the right way to go about things? Please bear in mind I have not read the book, but I react pretty badly to the title. I think Evangelicals and Mormons can agree that Jesus is indeed in charge of our lives, and in some sort of sense that makes him our “president” – but come on. This title is just a hook to get people to buy another book on living the Christian life, not just paying lip service to it, worrying that politics are getting in the way. But for every person that reads the book, there will be ten or more that will just see the title, an analogy at best, but one that is likely carried throughout the book.
Some people will interpret the analogy literally and we will see more religious tribalism in our elections. Others will take this as proof that Christians really are trying to establish a theocracy. This is another in the increasingly long line of documents claiming “manifesto” status in this election cycle, and to date they are all really just playing an angle of one sort or another.
At some point, the hook overtakes the message and things just get strange. I am beginning to wonder if we are there with this book.
Ralph Reed is telling McCain to reach out to Christians. Amy Sullivan, one of the early askers of The Question,and a committed leftie, is looking at Obama’s pastor meetings last week in Time. All this is going to do is further fracture Protestant Christianity. Old line denominations have all fractured and re-fractured on conservative/liberal lines (consider that I, as a Presbyterian, have literally a dozen or so Presbyterian denominations to choose from) and out of that fracturous nature, in part, sprang the independent Evangelical movement. Now that movement, never the tightest of alliances to begin with, is going to do the same thing.
Here is my question – will Mormonism drive through that gap? And I don’t mean this politically, like the Matt Lewis blog we looked at last week, I mean this on a membership/spiritual level. And if so, what will all the religious conservatives that could not bring themselves to vote for a Mormon be thinking then?
This is why I agree with the essential message of the book discussed above, if not its marketing efforts.
The Washignton Post writes about “the hurt” at Obama’s former Trinity Church. On a political level, I have no sympathy, you get the big stage, you insert your foot in your mouth, you get hurt – that’s life on the big stage.
But there is a flip side to this coin, and that is as a demonstration of just how damaging overt politics is to the church. Bitterness is apparent already:
Though several prominent pastors said Obama’s decision to leave Trinity might create minor friction with some black voters, it is highly unlikely that he will lose their support. Even most Trinity members don’t fault Obama, instead blaming the media and political attacks. [emphasis added]
Bitterness is not a trait a church should engender in its members.
In a secular society, politics will always be a game for the tough and the rough. The more I learn of it, the more I come to realize it takes a very special Christian indeed to hold their values and Christ-likeness in such a field of endeavor. Most of us are not up to the task. That is why we get hurt.
In the worst-case scenario, a McCain victory in November could likely lead to a Republican bloodletting that would tear apart the GOP well before 2012, contribute to another good Democratic election in 2010 and hand Democrats such a strong advantage during redistricting that Republicans wouldn’t be able to recover for years.
[...]
McCain’s presidency would likely divide Republicans over a number of emotional issues, either because his positions are directly contrary to many in his party (including some with daily microphones) or because he wouldn’t push divisive cultural issues that some in his party would prefer that he advocate.
Nothing undermines a political party’s reputation more than public infighting, so the GOP’s reputation, which almost certainly would benefit in the short term from a McCain victory, would suffer.
Social conservatives, Evangelicals, how ever you want to name it – have lost this one. Rothberg is definitely right that infighting will hurt us – ALL! Don’t know if it will kill us, but it’ll hurt. Best thing the culturally concerned, whether from religious or other motivation, can do this round is be a very good team player. We are on defense. And frankly, after the way we played the primary, we deserve it.
K-Lo points out that Bobby Jindal has a religion problem too. This is a blatant leftie attack and it is getting VERY old.
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Timothy Egan in the NYTimes citing “in-depth political thinker” John Lennon.
Casting Romney as a winner – no matter what. Smart Thinking.
Mormons supplanting Evangelicals? Possibility, but I would prefer it not be analyzed that way.
ENJOY THE WEEKEND!
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