Messiah College Professor Says Obama May Be The ‘Most Explicitly Christian President In American History’; ‘Not Even Close Bud’
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I have to admit that my head almost exploded when I read an article at Patheos by John Fea. Fea seems to be stuck back in 2008 when he thinks we saw the real Barrack Obama, not the one from the past three years as President.
Barack Obama, a devout Christian, offered people of faith much promise in 2008. He has largely failed to deliver — but there is still hope.
He goes on to make one of the most absurd claims about President Obama that can be made.
Obama may be the most explicitly Christian president in American history. If we analyze his language in the same way that historians examine the religious language of the Founding Fathers or even George W. Bush, we will find that Obama’s piety, use of the Bible, and references to Christian faith and theology put most other American presidents to shame on this front. I think there may be good reasons why some people will not vote for Obama in November, but his commitment to Christianity is not one of them.
What really needs to be defined here is what kind of Christianity Obama’s piety is grounded. If one has a total misunderstanding of the Bible and Christianity then fidelity to that is about as good as an atheist trying to lead a moral life and peruse social policies that reflect such values. Obama is a Liberal before anything else and Liberalism is a religion that stands in antithesis to Christianity. There can be no compromise between the two. Fea goes on to explain that he is really just still stuck in 2008 and hopes we see the real Obama again.
Unfortunately, for all of his religious rhetoric, Obama the president has failed to articulate the faith-based political vision he promised us that night in the tiny village of Grantham, Pennsylvania. His handling of the recent contraception issue was a disaster. He missed a wonderful opportunity to explain his health care proposal—disparaged by the GOP as “Obamacare”—as a direct extension of his Christian convictions to care for the poor and the needy. He has failed in his promise to reduce abortions in the United States and, as a result, protect the weakest and most vulnerable of the “least of these.” His plan to tax the richest members of society is driven by populist rhetoric, but it lacks a prophetic edge informed by the radical implications of Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels.
If Obama wins in 2012, we will see his true colors on matters of faith and policy. Without another election to worry about, he can either turn toward secularism or provide a vision of faith-based political action that would be quite different from what the Christian Right and his GOP rivals are offering. Will we get the Obama of the Compassion Forum or the Obama of the last three years?
It is the Obama of the last three years that has been the real Obama. The 2008 campaign version was the real facade and understanding Obama’s community organizing past should have clued us into that. We already know that Obama is not concerned about getting re-elected, or at least he says as much. But most importantly, and the thing I think that goes to the heart of the issue, Obama’s policies are putting Christians at risk. The call for Christians to love one another is paramount, so when someone advocates positions that puts other Christians at risk then that person’s commitment can be questioned. Obama fails here and that is why no Christian should vote for Obama in 2012.
Or to respond to the claim that Obama is the “most explicitly Christian president in American history” in a different way.
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