RELIGIOUS PRESIDENTS
-President Obama
In the past I have pointed out how presidents such as Clinton and Kennedy would repeatedly refer to Jesus Christ, God, and religion in speeches and interviews. Their references to faith and belief were treated with respect and considered a sign of deeper spirituality and morality by the media and the left. When President Bush did so, he was treated as an extremist, a lunatic, a radical fringe fundamentalist, an American Talibani.
President Obama mentions faith and Jesus more often than President Bush did.
And I think that's why the left shrugs or even supports President Obama when he speaks of religion. Because it doesn't really mean anything. He's not speaking of his faith because that's how he makes decisions or becauase he's learned to understand life by it. He's just using it to illustrate positions or even cloak other positions which are patently non-Christian, such as abortion on demand.
President Obama's faith was more closely defined in an interview when he was running for Senator against Alan Keyes, a very strongly religious man. The religion reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times interviewed then Illinois legislator Barack Obama about faith (courtesy Dude Abides):
President Obama mentions faith and Jesus more often than President Bush did.
He’s done it while talking about abortion and the Middle East, even the economy. The references serve at once as an affirmation of his faith and a rebuke against a rumor that persists for some to this day.Like Mr Perkins, I suspect this is more show than faith, and I think that's the key to it all. When President Bush spoke of his faith, he did so out of deep, personal conviction that shaped his life and worldview. That enraged and terrified some on the left. When President Obama does, its a personal opinion, something he joined rather than a deep defining worldview. Obama's faith, such as it is, is an incidental portion of his life that he uses to support things he already believed in rather than the defining reason for his beliefs or a life-changing event.
As president, Barack Obama has mentioned Jesus Christ in a number of high-profile public speeches — something his predecessor George W. Bush rarely did in such settings, even though Bush’s Christian faith was at the core of his political identity.
...
“I don’t recall a single example of Bush as president ever saying, ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ,’” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Christian group Family Research Council. “This is different.”
And I think that's why the left shrugs or even supports President Obama when he speaks of religion. Because it doesn't really mean anything. He's not speaking of his faith because that's how he makes decisions or becauase he's learned to understand life by it. He's just using it to illustrate positions or even cloak other positions which are patently non-Christian, such as abortion on demand.
President Obama's faith was more closely defined in an interview when he was running for Senator against Alan Keyes, a very strongly religious man. The religion reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times interviewed then Illinois legislator Barack Obama about faith (courtesy Dude Abides):
INTERVIEWER: Who’s Jesus to you?Jesus is a teacher who helps us reach God. That's his definition of who Jesus Christ was. One of the most cardinal, basic, and foundational theological basics of Christianity is that Jesus is God incarnate, fully human and fully God, who is the savior of the world through his life and death. Not just a teacher who helps us find God. Lets go on:
OBAMA: (He laughs nervously) Right.
Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.
And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.
OBAMA: I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.Tenent number two of Christianity denied: that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, as he taught. "No one can come to the Father except by me" Jesus said. "That's not true," Obama said. We move on:
INTERVIEWER: Do you believe in heaven?He believes not in heaven, but a reward for living up to his values. That believing what he thinks is right and doing what he thinks he should will result in good things for him, like instant karma. Christianity teaches that heaven is the reward for what Christ did in his life and sacrificial death, and that our works are "filthy rags" (actually menstrual rags) according to Paul and that we have nothing to boast of. Jesus teaches that at our absolute best all we did was the minimum of what we've been told to do, which earns us nothing. More:
OBAMA: What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.
INTERVIEWER: Do you believe in sin?Sin is doing things differently than he believes in, what he thinks is right. Not a violation of God's almighty and righteous demands, not a variation from God's perfect law, but a personal failure to live up to one's own values. And that results in "its own punishment." For President Obama, when he's most spiritual is when he's being "true to himself," not true to God or the Bible or the truth, or anything religious at all.
OBAMA: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: What is sin?
OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.
INTERVIEWER: What happens if you have sin in your life?
OBAMA: I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.
In other words, President Obama rejects the Bible as the infallible word of God by denying large sections of it for what he prefers to be true, denies the divinity of Jesus Christ, and denies that he's supposed to do what God says, preferring his "personal values." President Obama is, by his own statements, not a Christian. He's not a Muslim, either. You know what religion that's closest to? Buddhism. The belief that you have problems in your life because of karma, that things go better when you do right and worse when you do badly. That there is no heaven or hell, that Jesus was just a great teacher and we're all trying to be aligned with a great cosmic entity.
Where did he learn this "Christianity?" Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright. Either Wright's teachings are not remotely Christian (which is likely, given his Black Liberation Theology agenda) or President Obama didn't learn so good. Check out this little quote:
INTERVIEWER: Do you have people in your life that you look to for guidance?These are the guys that he's now calling distant acquaintances, people he never knew much, and distanced himself from. Then, he had an enormous amount of respect for the man and Pfleger was a "dear friend." Now, they're someone he had some remote contact with.
OBAMA: Well, my pastor is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for.
I have a number of friends who are ministers. Reverend Meeks is a close friend and colleague of mine in the state Senate. Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely.
President Obama's faith is the faith of most non-Christian Americans: if I live a good life (defined in a vague way) things will go better for me. Jesus is a good guy and teacher, nothing more. The only sin is hypocrisy. Nobody goes to hell. That's not Christian at all. The god of this faith is self, the law of this faith is the leftist creed, and the scripture of this faith is whatever you feel to be true.
And that's why, when the left hears him make these kind of statements, it doesn't bother them because what he believes in isn't really any different than most of them, and Christianity doesn't have any impact on his policy or actions. It's just a sort of cloud around him, a vague spirituality to help guide him in some ways, as long as its aligned with what he already believed in.
posted by Christopher Taylor at 8:56 AM
24 Comments:
Funny thing is, Obama's beliefs about Jesus and the Bible are a lot like mine (not exactly, but I am much closer to his viewpoint than, say, President Bush's). The difference is I know better than to call myself a Christian based on those beliefs.
There are far too many people who adhere to these beliefs, however vague, who call themselves Christians, for anyone to announce that they aren't Christian beliefs. Fundamentalist and literalist branches of Christianity may want to purge the softer takes on the New Testament from their interpretation of the word (and the Word), but on the face that makes about as much sense as saying homosexuals aren't gay because gay means happy.
Christianity is a religion which holds Jesus Christ, and the New Testament, at the center of its belief system. The spectrum of its interpreters, ranging from "Jesus was a guy with some good ideas" to "The world was created in six days," is wide, but it's all Christian.
"The spectrum of its interpreters... is wide, but it's all Christian."
Well, we can certianly call it whatever we want, it's a free country. But for anyone who truly holds the Bible as the center of their belief system, the idea that "Jesus was [just] a guy with some good ideas" is not a teneble position to hold. At best, those people can be called "unserious" or "unstudied" Christians, and even then only by a generous reading.
There are people who hold nonviolence as the center of their belief system but who think that MLK or Gandhi are just guys, not gods. There is a sizable branch of theology which holds that Jesus being the Son of God is basically a metaphor to highlight the importance of his ideas. You can hear these ideas discussed every Sunday in buildings across the land called churches. Respect them or not, they're Christians.
You can insist on a narrower reading of the term, but you'll be out of step with the English language. Next time you're in a good mood, you can call your mother and tell her you're gay. Then you can open a restaurant serving ground-up ham and call it a hamburger. Then you can walk into a bar and call someone an asshole and explain that you're referring to a valuable part of the body. Let me know how that works out for you!
Christianity gets to define its self, and it has quite well for almost two thousand years. That's how movements work: they define their own terms and who they are, and exclude people who don't fit that. People who reject very basic principles of Christianity aren't Christians even if they say they are.
It's like someone who claims to be a Democrat rejecting all the most fundamental positions and ideals of the Democratic party. Sorry, you aren't really one. You're just a guy who claims to be. Christianity isn't unique in this, all groups have this as a defining characteristic. Its not arrogant or unAmerican, it's not mean spirited. That's simply the definition of an exclusive group: here's the minimum you have to be inorder to be part of us. Reject that, and you aren't no matter what you say.
There are plenty of Democrats and Republicans who reject virtually all of the tenets of their party platforms. Basically you get identified as a Democrat or a Republican because of how you're registered, or, if you're a public figure, with whom you associate. Arlen Specter was a Republican until he announced he wasn't.
Christianity has certainly defined itself for thousands of years, but it has defined itself in uncountable ways across all sorts of spectrums. Throughout history one branch or another of Christianity has attempted to "party purge" but the definition of Christianity has remained elastic. You can define yourself out of Baptism or Catholicism but not out of Christianity. That's just the reality.
And the truth is that there are probably plenty of people sitting on pews in every denomination of Christianity who share Obama's views, however ill-defined. That's part of how he got elected.
"There is a sizable branch of theology which holds that Jesus being the Son of God is basically a metaphor to highlight the importance of his ideas."
Absolutely. I subscribe to this branch. The theological term for a person who believes such a thing is a mythographer, not a Christian.
That may be true in some academic circles, but the real-world term for people who admire the teachings of Christ, and meet in churches on Sundays to affirm them, who read the New Testament as a moral guidepost if not an infallible history, who celebrate Christ's birthday and other traditional Christian holidays with celebrations associated with Christianity over thousands of years, is "Christian."
For lunch I'm having a sandwich made from a spread of mashed peanuts and salt. It is not a butter. I have a name for it that is more ideologically sound. Everybody else, however, calls it "peanut butter."
If you hope to change the English language through theological distinction, good luck to you. But you cannot reasonably claim that this has already happened. The infrequency of use, to put it mildly, of the word "mythographer" is testament to that.
Look, you were the one who was attempting to assign theological specificity to a set of beliefs. I was just trying to help you use the correct definition. If you want to argue that anybody can call themselves a Christian, you won't find any disagreement from me. I can call myself an eggplant if I want, doesn't make it true.
The truth is, anybody who meets in a church to affirm the teachings of Christ has to make a distinction regarding what, exactly, they are affirming. If those distinctions are counter to what Christ said he was, or what the Bible said he did, then an honest accounting of their belief system would say that they are celebrating what they believe to be a mythology. And while I believe there are important lessons to be learned in either case, there is a qualitative difference between the two. If I study the value of the morality lessons taught by the Greek gods, that does not make me a Hellenist. In order to be a Hellenist, I would have to believe in those gods.
Yes, you can call yourself an eggplant. But everybody else will call you a human being, according to the agreed-upon state of the English language as it now stands. Same with "gay," "hamburger," "asshole" and "peanut butter." Your claims to the inaccuracy of a claim of "Christian," as with the claims one can make of any word, may be cerebrally compelling - why should flammable and inflammable mean the same thing? - but they fly in the face of the current usage of the English language. "Mythographer" is not a word currently in use by any sizable population to describe the people we're talking about. "Christian" is.
>The truth is, anybody who meets in a church >to affirm the teachings of Christ has to make >a distinction regarding what, exactly, they >are affirming.
Not really. In my opinion, one of the reasons Christianity (like other major religions) is so successful is precisely because its boundaries tend to be vague. Zealots and theologians enjoy making precise philosophical distinctions, but most people's spiritual beliefs are vague and messy, and so a cleric may stand in front of a crowded church and say, "Let us praise the Son of God," and offer no precise definition or requirement. Fundamentalists and atheists sing the same hymns, side by side, every week.
Mind you, I'm not saying this is how it ought to be. It is, however, how it is.
Anonymous, well what do you know then, I'm a Christian and didn't even know it. I feel so relieved now. ;-)
Look, I see your point that a casual, unexamined ("vague and messy" is a great way to put it) theology that is loosely centered around a few of the more 'feelgoody' messages espoused by Christ can be commonly expressed as being "Christian". But at the same time, there is a stigma of illigitimacy in that notion, much like if I wanted to call myself a Choctaw Indian because I have 1/64th Choctaw blood. I can get away with it, because it is ostensibly true, but to Choctaws who take their cultural heritage seriously, I'd always be just another 'Cherohonky" trying to cash in on something I know very little about. Many would take offense to it, even, saying I am giving a casual treatment to ideas and issues they take very seriously. And they'd be right.
Taken to the extreme, you make my point for me when you alluded to atheists going to church and singing hymns. According to your fast and loose definition, there is no reason why we couldn't call an atheist who studies Christ's teachings a Christian, but I think we'd both agree that common useage of the word "Christian" does not apply to atheists (at least not with anymore regularity than the word "mythographer" commonly applies to people who study religious metaphor!). The problem, if you look closely, is that the casual scope and definition of the term 'Christian' is too broadly applied to make much sense or be very useful. But to people who take it seriously, the definition is narrower and much more useful.
You can insist on a narrower reading of the term, but you'll be out of step with the English language. Next time you're in a good mood, you can call your mother and tell her you're gay. Then you can open a restaurant serving ground-up ham and call it a hamburger. Then you can walk into a bar and call someone an asshole and explain that you're referring to a valuable part of the body. Let me know how that works out for you!
What strikes me as odd is that you'd offer this as support for the idea that you can define a term however you want to based on personal whim. As you point out with these thoughts, that simply is not the case.
Words, as someone wise has said before, mean things. Christianity cannot be redefined to mean just anything you desire it to. It has a specific meaning with a specific group of ideals and beliefs. When you jettison some or all of those, you jettison the title and the group. That's just how it is.
Postmodernist thought tries to reject this and claim that truth has many meanings and is relative to each of us, that we can define things as we wish. That's patently absurd and reality continually crushes that notion, even if we're loony enough to ignore it.
No, you can't define a term on a personal whim. But language is defined over time, by the usage of the majority. Obama calling himself a Christian is not just his personal whim. It reflects a widespread usage of the word. A person who attends a church that centers itself, however loosely, around Jesus Christ, is a "Christian," just as "gay" basically means homosexual, "hamburger" basically means ground beef, and "asshole" is an insult.
It's true that it's easier to call yourself a Christian than it is a Choctaw. It's true that over thousands of years the definition of "Christian" has shifted and been watered-down. You may apply yourself to reinstating a more traditional definition, and good luck to you. But you'll be fighting the same battle as anyone who'd like "gay" only to mean "blithe."
It's interesting that "postmodernist" is cited in this case, as "postmodernist" once referred to a narrow movement of critical and artistic discourse and now is a loose term for a worldview. There are those who'd say you're using "postmodernist" incorrectly, as you've jettisoned many of the ideals of "postmodernism." But you're using it the way basically everyone uses it. That's the way language works.
"It's true that it's easier to call yourself a Christian than it is a Choctaw."
Thanks for completely missing my point, which wasn't about what you call yourself or how easy it might be, but about the legitimacy of that claim in the eyes of the people who have a vested interest and deep connection to the thing you are trying to glom on to.
That's what I meant by "easier." You'll have an easier time if you call yourself a Christian, even if you have very vague beliefs, than if you call yourself a Choctaw with the equivalent pedigree, because the majority of English-speakers will understand and accept your claim of Christianity but not of Choctawhood. (Choctadom?)
I did, however, miss your point that you think the legitimacy of language is decided by people who have a vested interest and a deep connection to whatever term is at stake. That's certainly not how I see language working, at least in most cases. Entomologists, for instance, have a narrow definition of the word "bug," but most of us use it to mean any crawly thing we're swatting in our house. That's what "bug" means, in mainstream culture. "Christian" refers to being somewhere on the spectrum of Christian belief.
There is an argument to be made - indeed, Christopher Taylor is making it - that the term ought to be reclaimed so that its meaning carries more genuine weight. But to say "Obama's not a Christian, he's a mythographer" is up there with "That's not a bug, that's an arthopod." You're in the minority of language usage, and language - unlike most other aspects of society - is not shaped by an invested minority but by speakers at large.
My point isn't about the legitimacy of language in mainstream cutlure, but the specificity of the ideas represented by that language, especially when they are being applied in a meaningful, non-general way. If you want to broadly address anybody who goes to any kind of church that professes to study Christ's teachings, "Christian" will work, but that definition quickly falls apart when you have a theological discussion about 'Christian churches'. For instance, you could casually use the word 'Christian' when addressing an issue that covers Unitarians and Mormons along with Catholics and Protestants, but there is a lot of contention in mainstream America about whether the first two are Christian denominations.
The more relevant and intelligent you want a conversation to be, the more you have to identify the terms you are using, and in the study of theology, 'Christian' has a more specific meaning than it does in casual mainstream use, and in that context, the term "Obama's not a Christian, he's a mythographer" may very well be true (I don't know what Obama believes in his heart, and neither does anybody posting here).
So yes, 'Christian' can have more than one meaning depending on how you apply the word, but if you want to have a meaningful discussion about theological concepts, the mainstream useage does not work.
Also, 'mainstream culture' is a pretty broad term and doesn't adequately cover what we are discussing here. Even in casual use, a person who refers to themselves as a Christian in California might not be able to "easily" apply that therm to themselves in Kansas. Nobody in my community would consider me a Christian based on my beliefs, but I could probalby call myself one in another place and get away with it.
No, you can't define a term on a personal whim. But language is defined over time, by the usage of the majority.
Again, you're not helping your case any. The majority of Christians do not define themselves in that manner. And as I've pointed out it is an absolute fact that a group gets to define its self.
It is possible that you're misunderstanding me and think I'm arguing that there's no variance of belief or opinion in Christianity, which is not just absurd but not at all what I'm saying. Christians disagree on a lot of things: eschatology, who wrote Hebrews, how Baptism is to be done, etc.
I'm saying that there are core, basic, non negotiable minimal beliefs that you must hold to be a Christian, and if you reject those, you lose the right to use that title honestly and accurately.
You can argue against that all you want. It's just that when you do so, you do it in opposition to reality and logic.
"The majority of Christians do not define themselves in that manner."
This argument eats its tail. I think what you mean is "The majority of people I consider to be Christians don't think that Obama's spiritual beliefs count as Christianity." What I mean is "The majority of the world, including all Christians who call themselves Christians, find Obama's spiritual beliefs to fall under the heading of Christianity." The very fact that Obama's Christianity has gone unchallenged, except by a rigid slice of Christians, proves my point. If he said he was a Choctaw everybody would sneer, but when he says he's a Christian just about everyone nods in agreement.
"And as I've pointed out it is an absolute fact that a group gets to define its self."
Really? Let's ask a freedom fighter that question. Oh, wait, I mean a terrorist. Or we could ask a nonreligious Jew who lived in Germany in 1939 - I'm sure he didn't have any trouble, because the Jewish community wouldn't have considered him Jewish. Language is fluid, like the culture it reflects. Words get defined and redefined over time. Right now Christianity has a wide and vague definition. Obama is well within his cultural bounds of calling himself a Christian.
(Theologically this might be a more complicated argument, as it would have to do with what was inside his soul, rather than how he's been represented - I've heard a rumor that the press sometimes gets things wrong, for example!)
Obama's take on Christianity essentially amounts to regarding himself and his own ideals as the measure of what it is to be a Christian, with no particular regard to Christ as the measure. Christians with any sense of what it means to be one recognize this as the essence of original sin. The rest, seeing themselves in the mirror, generally like what they see and sometimes call it Christ. These folks are not offended at having their names invoked by the POTUS.
think what you mean is "The majority of people I consider to be Christians don't think that Obama's spiritual beliefs count as Christianity."
No I mean what I said: people who consider themselves Christians, whether accurately or not.
Really? Let's ask a freedom fighter that question. Oh, wait, I mean a terrorist.
The problem is you're confusing lables with groups. Does al`Qaeda get to define who is in the group or not? How about Hezbollah? The Ku Klux Klan? NOW? See how that works? Of course they define themselves. Those are organizations, not labels. I hope that helps you understand the truth here.
I think your deep, burning need to defend President Obama no matter what is causing you to deny what you deep down know is true.
"I think your deep, burning need to defend President Obama no matter what is causing you to deny what you deep down know is true."
Your assumption that deep down, everyone sees the world as you do, despite overwhelming evidence to the country, could not be made more clear. Those who share your views know the truth. The rest deny it. "I guess basically everybody thinks he's a Christian, though I don't think so" couldn't be the conclusion. It must be "He's not a Christian, no matter how many people believe it to be the case." You're, um, a confident blogger, would be one way to put it.
"The problem is you're confusing lables with groups. Does al`Qaeda get to define who is in the group or not? How about Hezbollah? The Ku Klux Klan? NOW? See how that works? Of course they define themselves. Those are organizations, not labels. I hope that helps you understand the truth here."
Really? Christian's not a label? The entire Christian community has rejected Obama through self-identification? Or is it just that a narrow group of Christians, in the minority among Christians and the deep minority in American culture, object to the words of a political candidate?
Well you surely did try answerin' a fool Christopher
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