Obama's liberal Christianity

I'm getting the revolting e-mails in which Barack Obama is smeared as a Muslim (not, I hasten to point out, that being a Muslim is something to be ashamed of, but his alleged secret Muslim identity is used to smear him). I talk to people who are completely convinced that Obama is a Muslim, but is hiding it. I was talking to a friend yesterday who was frustrated and angry that a relative of his refuses to believe otherwise. Maybe I'm naive, but I think that should Obama get the Democratic nomination, most people will recognize this Obama-as-Muslim smear for what it is.

What has not been much examined, though, is Obama's Christianity. Andrew links to an essay praising Obama's ability to appropriate the black-nationalist message of his Chicago church and use it to inspire diverse crowds of whites and others. The essay, from a Seattle alternative weekly, also seems to praise Obama as a functional agnostic. I wonder if conservative Christians (like, well, me) who have been drawn to Obama have really thought about the church he identifies with, and the nature of his conversion. Here's the essay:

Six miles from the university, down Interstate 84, on Chicago's far south side, in the nondescript, low-rent, mostly low-rise neighborhood of Brainerd, is the Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama attends and where his pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., apostle of black liberation theology, delivers magnificently cranky sermons on how the "African diaspora" struggles under the yoke of the "white supremacists" who run the "American empire." Obama's membership of both institutions, the radical black church and the conservative law school, is a measure of the chasm that this latest candidate of hopes and dreams, uplift and national reconciliation, is trying to span. It's also a measure of his political and intellectual agility that the senior lecturer in law has managed to recast the language of black liberation theology into an acceptable—even, conceivably, a winning—creed for middle-of-the road white voters.

Obama is cagey, in a lawyerly way, about the supernatural claims of religion. Recounting a conversation about death that he had with one of his two young daughters, he wrote, "I wondered whether I should have told her the truth, that I wasn't sure what happens when we die, any more than I was sure of where the soul resides or what existed before the Big Bang." So I think we can take it that he doesn't believe—or at least doesn't exactly believe—in the afterlife or the creation. His conversion to Pastor Wright's brand of Christianity was "a choice and not an epiphany," born of his admiration for "communities of faith" and the shape and purpose they give to the lives of their congregants. "Americans want a narrative arc to their lives. They are looking to relieve a chronic loneliness," along with the reassurance that "they are not just destined to travel down that long highway towards nothingness." As for himself, and his enlistment at Trinity United, "Without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone." It's typical of Obama that such a cautiously footnoted profession of faith rings sympathetically to both the atheist and the true believer.

There's a lot packed into that paragraph. I would certainly like to hear Obama explain this more, but it seems that he was drawn to Christianity not out of faith conviction, but for basically social reasons. That's not entirely discreditable: when we think of someone becoming involved in a church for mostly social reasons, we think of someone who wanted to social-climb. That's not what Obama seems to have done. Rather, he understandably admired the social solidarity present in church congregations, and the sense of community bound together with the promise of spiritual and moral uplift. It's a fairly common narrative on the religious left: that church isn't so much about doctrinal belief as it is about celebrating community. Religious conservatives contend that religious liberals have replaced the worship of the transcendent God with worship of community, which is to say, the social self.

Moreover, Obama's agnosticism about whether or not humankind was created, or the existence of an afterlife, signals that he is very far from normative Christianity. Does he really believe in Christian teaching, or does he truly believe in the transformative power of community? Did he come to Jesus when he was baptized, or was his baptism only a symbol for his "return" to the black community? From a New York Times story:

It was a 1988 sermon called “The Audacity to Hope” that turned Mr. Obama, in his late 20s, from spiritual outsider to enthusiastic churchgoer. Mr. Wright in the sermon jumped from 19th-century art to his own youthful brushes with crime and Islam to illustrate faith’s power to inspire underdogs. Mr. Obama was seeing the same thing in public housing projects where poor residents sustained themselves through sheer belief.

In “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Obama described his teary-eyed reaction to the minister’s words. “Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones,” Mr. Obama wrote. “Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story.”

Mr. Obama was baptized that year, and joining Trinity helped him “embrace the African-American community in a way that was whole and profound,” said Ms. Soetoro, his half sister.

It's not an unimportant question, at least for religious conservatives tempted to vote for Obama.

Like I said, I would want to hear him talk about these theological matters in greater detail. I would also like to hear him discuss the vicious things proclaimed by his pastor, the black nationalist Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The church's magazine last year gave its top award to a man who "truly epitomized greatness" -- Louis Farrakhan. Richard Cohen writes today that there's nothing in Obama's record indicating that he's an anti-Semite, or that he agrees with his pastor about Farrakhan. Still:

[P]raise for an anti-Semitic demagogue is not a minor difference or an intrachurch issue. The Obama camp takes the view that its candidate, now that he has been told about the award, is under no obligation to speak out on the Farrakhan matter. It was not Obama's church that made the award but a magazine. This is a distinction without much of a difference. And given who the parishioner is, the obligation to speak out is all the greater. He could be the next American president. Where is his sense of outrage?

He has vilified whites and singled out Jews to blame for crimes large and small, either committed by others as well or not at all. (A dominant role in the slave trade, for instance.) He has talked of Jewish conspiracies to set a media line for the whole nation. He has reviled Jews in a manner that brings Hitler to mind.

And yet Wright heaped praise on Farrakhan. According to Trumpet, he applauded his "depth of analysis when it comes to the racial ills of this nation." He praised "his integrity and honesty." He called him "an unforgettable force, a catalyst for change and a religious leader who is sincere about his faith and his purpose." These are the words of a man who prayed with Obama just before the Illinois senator announced his run for the presidency. Will he pray with him just before his inaugural?

I don't for a moment think that Obama shares Wright's views on Farrakhan. But the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man. We know little about him, and, for all my admiration of him, I wonder about his mettle. The New York Times recently reported on Obama's penchant while serving in the Illinois legislature for merely voting "present" when faced with some tough issues. Farrakhan, in a strictly political sense, may be a tough issue for him. This time, though, "present" will not do.

For me, the one great thing about an Obama presidency would be his ability to get the nation past a racial standoff mired in the fights of the 1960s, and maybe, just maybe, effect real racial reconciliation. But you know, I'm not so sure that he can do that. If he is willing to turn a blind eye to his pastor's and his church's embrace of Louis Farrakhan, is he really a change agent on racial matters, or does he just give better speeches than Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? That is a question people ought to be asking.

And religious conservatives to whom the character of a candidate's faith matters should ask whether Obama is a Christian in a sense they would recognize -- that is, does he really believe in the Gospel, or is his faith primarily in the power of church to promote communal solidarity and positive change (a sanctified Kiwanis club, in other words)? The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but neither are they mutually inclusive. And for folks who take faith seriously in determining which candidate to vote for, this matters.