Saturday, March 15, 2008
What Would Jesus Do?
Watch the whole thing.
Long. Worth it. Promise.
This is not a new speech -- this is an old speech, given in 2006. It is a speech about personal faith in a modern America.
What's funny about this speech is that it is summarily ignored by Rush Limbaugh and the Clintonista's who are more interested in dredging up old "funny hat" pictures of Obama humoring his hosts in foreign countries, and old sermons by the Reverand Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama has repeatedly denounced in no uncertain terms.
Yet, these same folks manage to miss the story of Barack's very personal story of religious conversion (a story told in his first book written 13 years ago), and they manage to ignore this easy-to-find video of him talking about his own faith, and why morality matters in politics.
These same folks, of course, simply ignore the crazy stuff from John Hagee, Rod Parsley, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert, Jerry Falwell, Robert Tilton, Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker, Benny Hinn, and Joyce Meyer (to name just a few of the lunatic preachers out there).
At least two of these preachers have endorsed the current Republican candidate for President who, to his credit, has moved to distant himself from their more profound idiocies.
Of course, politics is politics, and so there are those on the left who are not giving John McCain a break, just as there are those on the right who are not giving Barack Obama a break.
Never mind the Christian Coalition, and Ralph Reed who went on to take gambling payola from Jack Abramoff. Never mind those ministers who justify slavery, spousal abuse, and even child abuse by quoting the Bible. Never mind those churches, dripping in hate, who shun homosexuals and who verbally abuse teenage mothers faced with difficult decisions.
Never mind the right-wing-religiously-rationalized destruction of 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina which, we are told, was caused by a confluence of queers, kikes, abortionists, feminists and people who believe in the First Amendment.
Instead these folks seem to get their lessons in morality from the drug-addicted Rush Limbaugh and the lecherous and lying Clinton's. Nice.
Which brings us back to the fundamentals of God and Government.
The bottom line, is that the constitutional principle behind separation of church and state has served this country well for more than 200 years.
Yet, we have some on the far right who want to throw it out.
Just this campaign season, we saw a leading candidate for President suggest we needed to change the U.S. Constitution in order to conform to the Southern Baptist convention.
Never mind that the U.S. Constitution is what separates America from becoming Afghanistan or Pakistan .... or the Vatican or Israel for that matter.
Barack Obama, at least, gets it -- ministers are flawed and fallible people too, and as a consequence, some of what is said in Church is wrong, some of it is crazy, and a significant amount of it is controversial, blasphemous or insulting to someone, somewhere, at some time.
And while most Americans want our politicians firmly grounded in the bedrock of common-sense morality, we do not want them marching lock-step to one faith, one denomination, or one preacher (not even Billy Graham).
The good news here is that you do not have to be a member of a church to know right from wrong, good from evil, truth from lie, or compassion from hate.
You just have to use common sense.
That is not always found in church, just like it is not always found on talk radio, or Capitol Hill.
Use your brains, your heart, and your gut. When all three bits of your anatomy are in sync and pointing in the same direction, you are not likely to be wrong.
Watch Barack talk about God and Government, above. What does your heart, head and gut tell you? Act accordingly.
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7 comments:
A lot of blame can be laid at the feet of the MSM, they take stuff like this and just run with it. Obama had to go on just about every cable news show last night to denounce some of his pastor's sermons. It was all over the 24 hour news channels ad nauseum.
The MSM have a nasty habit of building someone up only to try and rip them apart later.
It's like a shark feeding frenzy. Although I voted for Bill Clinton twice, I will never cast a vote for Hillary. I am sick of the slime, and "gotcha" kind of politics that really add nothing to the discourse. For that fact alone, I would vote for Obama, we do need a different kind of politics, I wholeheartedly agree.
I only hope that Hillary's slime machine doesn't damage him so much he won't be a viable candidate in the general election. She seems the type to not care.
Marie E.
I wouldn't define denouncing the "Reverend"'s racist and hateful comments only hours after they were exposed and aired by the media, as "repeatedly...whole heartedly" etc. One would think that Obama, who's assumed by many to have the intelligence and foresight etc to be President and a man who wants to unite America would have had the sense long ago to separate himself from ANYONE like Wright even on a social level, let alone call him his Pastor and attend his church. Obama has been a member there for 20 years, and its safe to assume that this isn't the first instance that this fool has preached this type of hate for people and disdain for the U.S. A man in Obama's position with his goals and aspirations should have picked up and moved LONG ago and denounced what the Rev. said LONG ago, and not on Friday, March 14, 2008. Many voters are smart enough to know that this probably isn't the first that the presidential candidate has heard about this. This could be Obama's "Swiftboat".
Or as some pundit said, Sen. Obama now must argue that while he attended the Rev. Wright's church, he did not inhale.
If you think Barack has only been drawing a line between himself and Wright in the last week, you have not been paying attention. See >> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin for example/
Wright's church is the largest United Church of Christ in the nation, and the United Church of Christ is a mostly-white denomination and very centrist.
For the record, Jeremiah Wright retired about 2 months ago, after 38 years of sermons, many of them available on DVD and tape. The opposition has been looking very hard through these sermons to find something shocking. They sure did find two or three things, but apparently these outbursts are a little rarer than most folks are being led to believe. To see what his last sermon was about, see the clip at >> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-wright_11feb11,1,4431179.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
It should be noted that Jeremiah Wright is not a hard person to research: he has written four books, entitled "What Makes You So Strong?" (1993), "Africans Who Shaped Our Faith" (1995), "Good News!: Sermons of Hope for Today's Families" (1995), and "What Can Happen When We Pray" (2002). Wright has also been a columnist, and been an adjunct professor (Catholic Theological Union and Chicago Theological Seminary). I think it's notable that no one is quoting from Wright's books or articles -- apparently there is not too much there that is very shocking.
Which is not to say that Wright is there to make people feel comfortable. His church is one that challenges people to take action; it is not designed to be an opiate for the rich and comfortable. It is, unabashedly and without shame, a church that preaches social justice. Here's a little from Wright in an NPR interview from 2005 at >> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4779412 Also interviewed is Rev. Moss who replaced Wright.
Oddly, no one can seem to find what church Anne Coulter belongs to -- she claims it's New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, but no one there knows her.
Rush Limbaugh claims to be Methodist, but no one can find any church this three-times-divorced drug-addicted draft-dodger attends either.
Bill O'Reilly is a Roman Catholic who routinely attacks his own church for having a "secular-progressive" philosophy which, in his mind, appears to encompass any religious teaching that does not put waterboarding front and center like the church did in to the "good old days" of the Inquisition.
Me, I'm happy to keep church and government separate.
P.
One difference is that Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly, as noisy and contentious and obnoxious as they may be, are not running for president. So they will never enjoy the scrutiny of their church-going or non-church-going.
Now his campaign is reduced to announcing that he missed church on the day Rev. Wright was particularly vehement.
Oh, man, and this is just the primary election!
I should have mentioned this too: The excellent Get Religion blog (religion and journalism) also asks why coverage of Obama and Wright degenerates into "gotcha" journalism.
OK, back to dogs.
Yes, Obama is running for President; fair enough. On the other hand, Jeremiah Wright is not. One has to assume that there is not much anyone can find bad on Obama, and having trolled through his second grade reading class, his speeches, his voting record, his taxes, and his law career, and finding nothing, they are now trolling through 38 years of sermons by his minister. Nice to see such thorough vetting, LOL. Wonder if they will do the same for McCain and Hillary?
On the other hand, Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, while not running for President, sure are running their mouths every day. And Anne Coulter, at least wrote a book denouncing everyone on the left as "Godless" which becomes very funny when you realize she is unknown to any church anywhere. Talk about Godless!
As for the travails of the far right and religion, Frank Schaeffer has an interesting piece at >> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/obamas-minister-committe_b_91774.html in which he notes that:
"When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr."
Read the whole thing.
Funny how this stuff was not picked up when it was just Republicans white folks running for President, but it's all very important stuff when it's a black guy. Any brick in a fight, I suppose. Fair enough.
As for Obama saying he was not in church, that was simply to correct the lie told by right-wing slander-bearer Ron Kessler and repeated by William Kristol in the NYT this morning. In fact, Obama was doing a lot of things that day, but he was not in Church. Lie corrected, fact stated. The fact that it is so important that Obama was in church that day (more than any other) suggests how rare Wright went off the day beam. If it was a common thing, pick any other day in 38 years of preaching, eh??
On the upside in this brouhaha, we now have people talking about Barack Obama as a long-term Christian, his regular church attendance, his belief in Jesus Christ, and his belief in both moral values in politics AND the need for separation of church and state. Not too bad.
As for Trinity Church sermons, they are on the web site of the church for anyone to watch if they have the time. I would rather have detal surgery, LOL, but it's not like this church has been hiding itself under a bushel basket.
P.
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