Last March when polls reported that 10% of the population thought Barack Obama was Muslim, I counseled calm: Obama is a new character on the scene. As people get to know him, that percentage will decline.
Instead, it's gone up. The newest poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 13% now believe he's Muslim - and a staggering 19% of McCain supporters believe him to be Muslim. Only 48% of Republicans say Obama is Christian (the balance is unsure).
This is truly frightening - not so much because of the implications for Obama but because of what it says about how we as Americans consume information. With more time, and more information swimming about, the public has become progressively less well informed.
To some extent this is about the politicization of mainstream media. Increasingly, people gravitate to the media sources that confirm their preconceived notions - Fox and Rush and WND.com for conservatives and Olberman and Kos for liberals. If that's true, that represents a searing indictment of conservative media - for either promoting or failing to shoot down a blatant falsehood. (There may be counter examples on the liberal media; please post if you have them).
But this can't be the whole explanation. After all, the percentage of independents who think Obama is Muslim also rose from 8% to 14%.
Then I noticed this: the biggest increase in the percentage who think he's Muslim was among young people. Only 8% of people from 18-29 believed he's Muslim in March. Now, 17% do. By contrast, among those 65 and older, the percentage who thought he was Muslim actually dropped during this period.
What's the biggest differentiator between those groups when it comes to news consumption? The internet. Younger people get their information online. Older people still use print.
As the editor of a website, I hate to even suggest this but is it possible that this Muslim factoid provides chilling proof that web-dependent news consumers end up more poorly informed than in the olden days? Is it possible that all the fuddy-duddy old media people who warned about the internet dumbing us all down were right?
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Obama may not be a Muslim but he settled in a "Christian" Black Nationalist church that sounds like the Nation of Islam. In addition his "mentor", Rev. Wright, gave an award to the Nation of Islam leader and traveled to meet Quadifi with Farrahakan. Obama's mentor Rev. was a Muslim before he went to study Christian theology. Both of Obama's fathers were Muslims. Obama said in a interview, that the prettiest sound was the Muslim call to prayer. He was registered as a Muslim in his Indonesian school.
I think Obama is very comfortable in the Muslim ideology. He only relates to Christianity in terms of the communist invention - liberation theology. According to Obama, "giving" to the government through mandatory alms aka, taxation, is a Christian donation to the "poor." I don't know what or who Obama is and neither does the editor.
I wonder if reality is so complex that we just cannot wrap our minds around it and retreat into biased ghettos - conservative talk radio, WND, Daily Kos, etc. - in emotional self defense?
I note a similar tendency, in the comments here but also out in the real world, to deny the schismatic divisions of Christianity by labeling some Christians as not Christians at all.
Barack Obama unequivocally professes to be a Christian. He also appears not to be hostile to Islam, with which (if not in which) he grew up. To be certain, his UCC denominational ties were at or near the leftmost boundary of liberal Christianity, and the Black Liberation Theology thing is well out of the mainstream, too - but what of it? The Protestant Reformers opened Pandora's Box, and before they died they were anathematizing Anabaptists and others who took their "sola" principles and ran off in a different direction with them. Denominations, sects, cults and personal "independent" fiefdoms have but multiplying ever since.
Every Christian group can say (and in my experience have always said when the doors were closed and blinds drawn) that the others are not authentically Christian, but I would counsel that in our public life, we accept professing Christians as "Christian" in a non-trivial sense rather than saying they're not really Christian. I don't have much use for liberal Christianity, but that's different that upping the rhetorical ante by denying that it's Christian at all.
Likewise, I'm fed up with the "Muslims don't worship the same God" line. The reality is that they understand the same God quite differently than Christians do - as do the Jews. It simply isn't helpful to escalate non-Trinitarianism into "different God" - at least unless one is addressing relativists who think the different understanding is a matter of total indifference.
Dear FzxGkJssFrk,
You write, "I have great difficulty believing that his beliefs are authentically Christian."
Why?
will say, as a Christian, that while I understand Obama is not a Muslim, and I understand that he professes Christianity, I have great difficulty believing that his beliefs are authentically Christian.
Posted by: FzxGkJssFrk | September 23, 2008 9:59 PM
So what beliefs are authentically Christian? Be specific please because inquiring minds want to know.
All this rap against religions must be from folks who hate the US Constitution and our freedom of religion. Bigots who criticize US leaders because of their religion represent the worst in anti-religious fervor. Communist countries persecute people for their religions, and now these far right wingnuts think they are cute doing it. Hate is hate by any name, and if you hate the US so much, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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