And John Stewart does it again:
Category: Politics
Lingering Questions
Tripp Fuller shared a great thought today via his blog:
Listening to both parties each night has made me confident that the church really needs to quit outsourcing its vocation.
Makes a world of sense to me. Seems like the less the church does, the more the government feels it needs to step in to care for people. I can agree with much of the Democratic view of things because they see the need to step in and help the helpless. Yet, I still have to question if that’s really the government’s role. If the church really did their job, I think we’d be a lot closer to solving the world’s problems – than depending on the American Government to do so.
Kevin Hendricks and I seem to be asking some of the same questions as well and trying to decide how someone who claims to be a follower of Christ also claim to put country first. Seems backwards to me.
Tripp also shares several questions raised by Warren Carter (who is on the Homebrewed Christianity podcast last week – with part 2 to be posted this week):
Here are Carter’s questions:
What does it mean to be…..
- rich Christians in an age of hunger?
- well fed Christians in an age of poverty?
- vacation-homed Christians in an age of homelessness?
- overclothed Christians in an age of nakedness?
- highly entertained Christians in an age of militaristic violence?
- Sermon-on-the-Mount-shaped Christians in our age of empire?
Finally, thought this was an interesting contradiction in Sara Palin’s speech last night…
First she rips on Obama because “Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights?”
Then she applauds John McCain because “To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless … the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God.”
Got answers? The world is listening.
related ::
tripp fuller :: preaching the sermon on the mount and some more substantive lingering questions
barack obama’s acceptance speech
sara palin’s RNC convention speech
kevin hendricks :: country first
SSL :: question for today
Question for today
Posted this question on Twitter today and my other social networks.
Figured I’d post it here (without the 140 character limit) and see what response I get.
question :: Two men are running for president of the United States. Both men claim to be strong Christians and/or followers of Chirst. Can you trust that claim, if they also claim to put country before God?
See the image above and this quote from Obama’s speech last night:
“So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.”
Then he told them what they could expect for themselves: “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat—I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? If any of you is embarrassed with me and the way I’m leading you, know that the Son of Man will be far more embarrassed with you when he arrives in all his splendor in company with the Father and the holy angels. This isn’t, you realize, pie in the sky by and by. Some who have taken their stand right here are going to see it happen, see with their own eyes the kingdom of God.” – Luke 9:23-27
45 years later we’re still fighting for it
Today will be an historic day. Last night the Democratic Party officially nominated Barack Obama as their party’s presidential nominee. Tonight, he will accept the nomination with a speech in Denver — exactly 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Today will be a great day in American history – and yet a sad day as well. Just this week, men were arrested in Colorado for plotting an assassination attempt on Obama – simply because he’s black.
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
A VP in our office just walked through excited about Obama’s nomination but also noted, “looks like its going to come down to black vs white (in November).”
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – the American Declaration of Independence
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
And whatever happens in November will already be historic. The downside though is that no matter what — we still have a long way to go.
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
“America has given the negro a bad check. A check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.'” – Martin Luther King Jr.
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
And this goes beyond just white and black. It goes for red and yellow, black and white. For all are precious in His sight.
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
“I remember reading the stories of white Christians telling King to be patient. Black Christians were told over and over again, black and white alike, to wait for God’s kingdom in the arena of racial justice. The right to vote was not the end. It was seen as a means to participate in democracy, to work alongside fellow citizens to aide our society to fulfill its own sense of calling.
I live with a tragic history that remembers the failure of churches to be more determined by color than baptism. A reality we still wrestle with today. But a part of that tragic history is how fellow Christians, on this continent, refused to let people of color in on the conversation called America. What they didn’t know was that we already had our own conversation, and we wanted them in on it. Even though we had our own conversation going since the beginning of sojourn, we still wanted to join in as fellow citizens and broaden the conversation. We wanted to bring out gifts to the table. We wanted equity along racial lines. A piece to the puzzle to achieving such equity was the practice of voting.” – Anthony Smith (aka Postmodern Negro)
It amazes me that we’re still fighting this battle.
Donald Miller at the DNC Convention
Emergent Village shares the video and text of Donald Miller’s (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What) prayer of benediction at the DNC Convention in Denver last night.
Here’s the video:
The full text and background story is at emergent village.
related:
emergent village
SSL :: christian conservatives could bolt from GOP
SSL :: bone of my bone. flesh of my flesh.
SSL :: more on searching for God knows what
The Faith of Barack Obama
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