I finished reading Stephen Mansfield’s (author of The Faith of George W. Bush) latest book, The Faith of Obama last week. In my opinion, it’s a great, well-balanced look at the 2008 Democratic Presidential Nominee, Barack Obama.
While Mansfield has said himself that he’s not a fan of Obama’s politics, he argues that there’s much more to Obama’s faith than others have previously suggested. There’s no doubt in my mind that everyone has different ideas, stereotypes or viewpoints on Obama and his faith.
This past Sunday, as I sat with “my tribe” awaiting our weekly gathering, a friend noticed the book I was carrying.
He paused as he read the title. “The Faith of Obama?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“So he believes in God?”
“Yes,” I replied.
He leaned in as to almost whisper a secret.
“So he believes in our God?”
“Yes,” I replied again realizing where this conversation might be headed. “He’s a follower of Christ – just like you and me.”
My friend walked away seemingly amazed.
Another story I’ve recently heard is of a local men’s Sunday School class spending the entire Sunday School hour discussing the “liberal” politics of Obama.
And again, later in the week I received an e-mail criticizing a former pastor for supporting Obama’s bid for the presidency.
It appears that after the uprising of the Religious Right, liberal politics and Christianity just don’t mix.
Perhaps that’s what intrigues so many (and scares so many others) about Obama’s faith — that he can vote against bills that are rooted in traditional conservative values (abortion, gay rights) and yet still claim to “serve an awesome God in the blue states.”
For me, two of the most intriguing chapters in the book discuss Obama’s pastor of 17 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and a later comparison between Republican Presidential Nominee, John McCain, former Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and current President George W. Bush.
Of course like many of Obama’s politics and religious views, these issues are each complex and the chapters themselves would not stand well on their own. However, Mansfield does a great job of laying out the complexity of Obama’s roots and looking beyond the 10-sec YouTube clip of Rev. Wright.
Mansfield does more than just simply recant Obama’s upbringing under an atheistic mother and a father and step-father rooted in the Islamic faith — he is careful to explore how this upbringing could be detrimental as well as beneficial to the future politician.
“His life was a religious swirl. He lived in a largely Muslim country. He prayed at the feet of a Catholic Jesus. He attended a mosque with his stepfather and learned Islam in his public school. At home, his mother taught him her atheistic optimism…
Only through a steely shielding of the heart, only through a determined detachment, could a child of Barack’s age be exposed to so much incongruous religious influence and emerge undamaged. Perhaps, though, the damage was in the detachment itself.”
This lack of congruity would appear more and more as Obama grew.
“I had no community or shared traditions in which to ground my most deeply held beliefs,” Obama writes in his book, The Audacity of Hope. “The Christians with whom I worked recognized themselves in me; they saw that I knew their Book and shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me remained removed, detached, an observer among them. I came to realize that without a vessel for my beliefs, without an unequivocal commitment to a particular community of faith, I would be consigned at some level to always remain apart, free in the way that my mother was free, but also alone in the same ways she was ultimately alone.”
It was this detachment that eventually led him to Rev. Wright’s church. And it was one of these early sermons by Wright that led Obama to a lifetime of discovering God’s truth.
Mansfield writes, “Seeing biblical content was overlaid against social commentary and all brought to bear on the sufferings and promised victories of each individual life in the congregation. At sermon’s end, he found himself in tears.”
Obama later explained, “It came about as a choice and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.”
And yet despite (or in spite) this explanation, “Critics of Obama and, certainly, of Jeremiah Wright wonder whether anything approximating the traditional Christian Gospel is preached at Trinity Church.”
“It’s that lack of understanding and often ignorance than brings about much of the fear/issues people have with Wright and Trinity Church. A fear that this church is preaching a Gospel that’s not in sync with the “born again, new birth, blood washed, Spirit-empowered Christianity that evangelicals know.”
Yet Mansfield points out that for Obama, religious commitment did not require him to suspend critical thinking, “he was pleased that his faith would not require ‘retreat from the world that I knew and loved.'”
“For Obama, faith is not simply political garb, something a focus group told him he ought to try. Instead, religion to him is transforming, lifelong and real. It is who he is at the core, what he has raised his daughters to live, and the well he will draw from as he leads… Obama seems to be sincere in what he proclaims. He embraced religion long before he embraced politics. Indeed, it was his faith that gave him the will to serve in public office, and the worldview of that faith shaped his understanding of what he would do once he came to power.”
Understanding Obama’s faith means understanding the religious trends of our times and what may come to shape America in the future. So regardless of your political leanings, this book does a great job of giving added insight and understanding into not only Barack Obama, but possibly how “the other side” views God and their understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
related ::
something beautiful :: free preview of the faith of barack obama
Amazon.com :: promo video for the faith of barack obama
SSL :: sen barack obama on faith
SSL :: obama’s speech on race
SSL :: james dobson doesn’t speak for me
SSL :: FOTF prays for a blessing on obama
SSL :: quote the whole dang thing
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