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I wrote this post on January 28 at The Moderate Voice. Check out the comments. People called the concerns about Barack Obama’s church, that surfaced at that time in the form of the church’s magazine’s high regard for Louis Farrakhan a “bullshit issue.” People were upset with the guilt by association.
I agreed then and agree now that guilt by association is wrong and that making the church an issue was a bullshit issue.
However, what I pressed people to respond to, which no one ever did in that thread, was this academic concept, which I wrote in a comment at that post:
All along, the thing that’s been most curious to me has been:
At what point is it reasonable to say, “You know – you say you stand for one thing, but the religious leader you follow espouses another – how do you square that and why don’t you find a different religious leader who is more in line with what you think?”
I would apply a similar kind of questioning to Republicans who follow Bush – at what point do they say to themselves, I simply do not agree with nor can I any longer follow this man. Or with Pelosi or, tada, with the Clintons. You know what I mean (look at Matt Dowd who left the Bush admin. or at the former Clinton advisors who’ve gone to Obama or even Dick Morris).
I guess that point came just before Barack Obama sat down and wrote Otis Moss this letter. And for Scott McClellan, it came some time after he got his advance for his book proposal.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 10:19 am June 1st, 2008 in Barack Obama, Campaigning, Elections, Media, Politics, Race, Religion, WH2008
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12 Responses to “TUCC resignation: what changed for Obama, voters in four months?”
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I was raised and still consider myself Catholic. There have been many things that have happened in the name of the church that I clearly disagreed with. I sat in the pews and heard Priests state things from the pulpit that outraged me. Yet the church is part of me culturaly and I don’t think a church exisits where I would agree with everything.
What changed for Obama? My belief is he just got tired of it. It meaning the constant attempts to make everything that happened at that church to be somehow indicitive of Obama’s beliefs. Face it, he is a Senator, he is running for President, how often is he even actually in Chicago to attend at all let alone to have input.
This church was indeed important to him. He found his spirituality there. The church did much for the community which he agreed with. That to me is what a church is supposed to be for.
The problem is churches regardless whether its Central Trinity, or Rod Parsley’s church or thousands of others big and small have overstepped their purpose and forced themselves more and more into politics.
I reserve the right to disagree and even ignore Priests when they cross the political line and it’s quite clear in many cases Obama has done that as well. Unfortunaly Fox News doesn’t.
It is interesting to speculate on the motivations of Messrs. Obama and McClellan. Here is one take from the Right on the Senator’s decision:
PAUL [MIRENGOFF] adds: Obama left Trinity Church for the same reason he joined it — political opportunism. The theology was always something he could take or leave. Both phenomena, the opportunism and the fact that he could take Rev. Wright’s brand of black liberation theology, reflect very poorly on Obama.
I think we all know what changed. Videos started showing up on YouTube and he got to the point where politically he felt taht quitting his church was the best move.
[unrealistic]Or better yet, why not just reject the whole enterprise as (essentially) an argument over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?[/unrealistic]
Recognizing that no atheist could ever be elected to the office of POTUS in today’s social climate, it still strikes me that no atheistic candidate would ever have this kind of problem.
Pretend for a moment that Sam Harris is a politician running for office, rather than a writer and neuroscience scholar. Can you imagine any articles about Harris’ pastor problems? Nope, the articles would instead be about his lack thereof, and this would be portrayed as a bad thing.
Joe – very interesting comment, thanks.
Let me comment on something you wrote: “The problem is churches regardless whether its Central Trinity, or Rod Parsley’s church or thousands of others big and small have overstepped their purpose and forced themselves more and more into politics.
I reserve the right to disagree and even ignore Priests when they cross the political line and it’s quite clear in many cases Obama has done that as well. Unfortunaly Fox News doesn’t.”
Should we blame ourselves for this? Why is this? What in society has changed? I was asking someone this within the last week?
I mean, maybe the tension between church and state, religion and politics has always been there. Or maybe it’s the not wanting it to matter that makes us point out how much it does matter – see Len’s comment, I think that’s part of what he’s pointing out.
I keep going back to notions of leadership, qualities related to leadership. And the pushing, by some people, of the idea that if you don’t have some religion and some god, then you can’t have a compass that anyone can trust and therefore your leadership can’t be driven by anything that anyone can recognize.
I don’t happen to think that’s accurate. I never have believed that you have to have a god to have morals.
But maybe this is part of it?
Ben – so you’re saying it was politically expedient. Do you believe, though, that Obama does in fact diverge from the church, or do you think he has been and continues to be and will continue to be sympatico with its tenets?
I think this is an important distinction because I too believe that the timing indicates that the heat became unbearable.
However – I’m more interested in feeling comfortable with whether or not the resignation reflects how he actually feels.
I’m sure I can’t really know, and maybe it doesn’t matter.
Interestingly enough, if you dissect Christianity by the words of its namesake and compare the statements Wright made in regard to the government he seems to come off on the side of Christ. Now I take the stance that no government can govern under the rules of any religion, but that is a different issue.
The idea that AIDs is a government conspiracy is pretty silly, but is does have a factual basis in the US government’s actions with regard to syphilis.
The idea that our foreign policy created 9/11 rather than our “freedoms” is common currency amongst foreign policy analysts (outside Bushdom).
So, in actuality what people resent is that it is said, especially in a black church. Poltically it is bad for Obama, socially it is bad for the church to be under this microscope. Does Obama believe all of this, I’d guess he finds a fair amount of it quite reasonable.
I am fortunate to stand outside organized religion, I am afforded a considerably less biased eye, but then I am not Average Voter.
On another post Lynda waxes nostalgically about Catholicism, well, History isn’t on her side, neither old nor recent. She sees it from that side not clear clinical facts. It isn’t the business of religion to do facts, rather their business is faith.
Len – I mentioned your comment but didn’t respond directly.
I think you’re right but am embarrassed to say that I don’t know who Sam Harris is!!
Isn’t the issue for some people re: atheists that people don’t think atheists have a moral compass or something if they don’t have a god? That’s my understanding but I’m way far from knowledgeable. I used to follow The Atheist Mama – loved Cassandra’s writing – but haven’t lately. I learned a lot there.
Well – Chuck I think religion seeks to have you have faith in the facts that whichever your faith is is seeking to have be the basis of the faith, no?
Sam Harris is one of the “New Atheist” authors, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Tufts University professor Daniel Dennett. Collectively, they go by the moniker “the Four Horsemen.” Sam Harris (the youngest of the four) wrote “Letter to a Christian Nation” and “The End of Faith.”
There is a popular misconception that atheists are amoral, baby-eating granny rapists, and it’s basically grounded in the idea that morality can only come from religion. This is of course counterintuitive, because lots and lots of biblical “morality” has fallen by the wayside as human culture has progressed and matured. What’s the moral way to treat your slaves these days? Oh wait that’s right, it’s not moral to have slaves. How did that happen? Did someone get a memo from above on a stone tablet, and was there a burning bush this time around or did the Invisible Magical Entity play it low-key?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that morality is an artifact of our evolutionary roots, subject to the prevailing cultural zeitgeist. The difference in our moral sense from that of other Great Apes is a matter of degree, not of kind.
People don’t need the threat of being tortured forever by fiat of an ever-vigilant “celestial dictatorship” (as Hitchens calls it) in order to behave morally. If someone really believes that the fear of eternal punishment is the only motive for behaving in a moral way, then what does that say about that person’s opinion of humanity?
I have seen people make the claim that without belief in their particular deity’s brand-name cachet, there would be nothing restraining them from rampages of rapine, murder and mayhem. They would kill their neighbors over dog or fence disputes, or indeed over nothing at all. By their own admission, fear of theological punishment is the only thing that holds these people back. And they have the nerve to accuse atheists of immorality.
Scary, no?
Thanks, Len re: the Four Horsemen. Fascinating. I am a little familiar with it but I don’t think I realized it was a formal group or seen as that.
As for the rest, I agree – it’s bunk. Of course people have morals even if they don’t believe in God or a god or subscribe to a particular religion. I understand what you’re explaining and why people who do think that people who don’t believe in God or have a religion must not have morals, but I agree – it’s completely counterintuitive.
In part it says, we only know what to do or not do because some else told us so. That’s crazy. The human is unique because he or she can determine what is right and wrong, but not because of what others tell him or her. That is part of it – laws etc. But certainly all that is informed by thoughts that have little to do with religion. Clearly, religion did not come first.
Well, the Four Horsemen isn’t what you could call a “formal group.” It’s more of a tongue-in-cheek joke than anything else.
Here they are in video action, and here’s an amusing webcomic about the Atheist Apocalypse. Look closely at their newspaper box and the flyers in the windows in both the first and last panels.