Hot Air’s Ed Morrisey has posted a copy of Obama campaign literature from Kentucky (pictured below) that shows him in front of a beaming cross (it’s literally covered with glowing bulbs) beneath the words “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Change.”
Given the national controversy unleashed Mike Huckabee’s alleged use of the cross in a Christmastime ad, Morrisey asks where the outrage is this time around:
Remember when Mike Huckabee offered an innocuous and pleasant Christmas ad, only to be accused of Christianism for supposedly having a floating cross in the background — which turned out to be a bookshelf? Well, apparently the cross has suddenly become cool for politicians. Barack Obama has made it the centerpiece of his appeal in Kentucky ….
Given the hysteria generated by Governor Huckabee’s Christmas greeting, we should see at least three of the ten plagues of Egypt accompanying such a “Christianist” advertisement for a presidential candidate.
Doesn’t Morrisey have a point? Isn’t there a double standard here? And might it extend well beyond this Obama literature? Republicans have long claimed that the media beats up on them as dangerously theocratic whenever they get even mildly churchy.
That’s why Republican candidates, particularly at the national level, steer clear of church appearances, though they’re a staple of Democratic campaigning. Even as George W. Bush rallied the Christian Right to tremendous effect in 2004, for instance, he never did campaign stops at churches. John Kerry, meanwhile, made numerous appearances in front of African American congregations.
The same thing appears to be happening again this cycle, with Obama frequently popping up in pulpits. Has John McCain made such appearances?
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posted May 14, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Big Difference. Obama is in a church. You expect to find crosses behind speakers in churches. Huckabee was in a living room, with a tree that put the shelving unit in shadow. It was clearly a photoshopped image…how do the edges of a shelf glow when there is clearly no light shining on them?
Now, you’d have an apt comparison if Obama appeared in a church in front of a flying elephant. One doesn’t expect to find a flying elephant in church, just as one does expect to find glowing shelving in the shadow of a Christmas tree.
posted May 14, 2008 at 4:01 pm
An interesting question that bears consideration, but another relevant factor is that Obama is fighting off false rumors about his religion which are meant to have a negative effect on his campaign.
Another difference is that some Republicans really ARE theocratic, certainly moreso than all but the very rarest of Democrats. If you come from the party that’s home to people who call America a Christian nation, say the Constitution should be amended to reflect God’s law, push for prayer in public schools, use religious justification for wars, base policy on fundamentalism rather than science, and see Islam itself as an enemy, of course people are going to be more sensitive to your religious gestures.
posted May 14, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Dan,
All good points. But with Obama marketing himself as a committed Christian (i.e. distributing Christian lit like this), and telling church audiences
“I am confident we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth,” it is surprising that he is so popular with secular Democrats, no?
posted May 14, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Thank You “God-O-Meter”.
Nothing you can say will dissuade the true believers who have annointed Obama their messiah that he is doing something absolutely shameless and hypocritical.
Good grief. I AM a Christian, and at the time said loudly and clearly that with the Huckabee shenanigans I would vote FOR H. Clinton rather than tolerate further blurring of lines between the office of President and the faith of the President…
You can imagine how I feel now.
posted May 15, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Bridgeview,
How is a Christian (Obama) appearing in a Christian Church (with all its trappings) “doing something absolutely shameless and hypocritical”?
And why is a Christian (you) bearing false witness? Ain’t that a sin?
posted May 15, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Mr. Gilgoff,
We know you don’t like Mr. Obama, but I found it interesting that you found it necessary to show the image TWICE! Was your ‘argument’ not convincing enough?
And you ask,
I would have to say no, in agreement with, and for the same reasons as RJohnson above.
In fact, the only double standard we’ve seen from the rightwing religious bloogers is the emphasis on Jeremiah Wright and the free pass given to Hagee.
posted May 15, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I hope you can’t detect an anti-Obama bias–or any bias for or against any of the candidates, for that matter–since it’s God-o-Meter goal to stay as objective as the blog format allows. GOM is not against Obama, or for him. Or for or against any of the other candidates.
Wright did receive a lot more news coverage than Hagee, some of which is understandable given the much closer relationship between Obama and Wright than between McCain and Hagee.
God-o-Meter has filed two dozen posts mentioning John Hagee’s controversial endorsement of John McCain since he made that endorsement in late February. It has posted about three times as many mentioning Jeremiah Wright. Given the important difference in the two cases mentioned above, that seems like a pretty fair ratio.
posted May 15, 2008 at 3:14 pm
“Wright did receive a lot more news coverage than Hagee, some of which is understandable given the much closer relationship between Obama and Wright than between McCain and Hagee.”
But forgotten in this mix is the fact that McCain SOUGHT OUT the endorsement of Hagee, while Obama pushed away the connection between he and his minister. To this day, McCain has yet to renounce Hagee in the same manner that Obama renounced Wright.
It would seem that a candidate who actively seeks out the endorsement of a minister, knowing full well what he stands for, deserves at least as much coverage as one who, knowing what his own minister stands for, distances himself from him.
posted May 16, 2008 at 12:07 pm
RJohnson writes:
I can understand people thinking that McCain’s seeking of the Hagee endorsement deserves some scrutinity. Certainly. But *at least as much as* a minister that has been intimately involved in Obama’s life, who led him to Christianity, gave him the black identity he had long sought, and in some ways launched his political career?
McCain’s campaign to get Hagee’s endorsement might have been misguided, and the way he distanced himself from Hagee has certainly been clumsy–and possibly disengenious–but God-o-Meter simply doesn’t accept an equivalance between that controversy and the Wright flap.
Hagee is peripheral to McCain’s personal and political life. Wright has been central to both parts of Obama’s.
posted May 17, 2008 at 11:09 am
Obama: “My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want. But I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”
I wonder how contemplative religious orders would feel about that statement..
posted May 18, 2008 at 12:15 pm
I voted for Obama in the primary, and I’m a Christian. That said, Huckabee is offensive because he really believes the evangelical party line, and wants others to, too. Obama by his own admission doesn’t go to church enough to even know what his pastor says from the pulpit. No one’s threatened by that sort of Christianity. For Obama’s poster, the cross is just marketing. Marketing isn’t offensive, because everyone knows to take it with a grain of salt.