In today’s “Sounds far less interesting than it actually is” category: David Kopel opines on Ann Coulter’s opinion of Obama’s Christianity. Ann mocks the idea of Obama as a Christian; Kopel reasons that he is; the VC readership (consisting mostly of atheists) is all over the place. Neil opines more here.
I’ll let Haemet’s readers come up with a coherent definition of Christianity and Christian faith; y’all will be good at it.
The more interesting question to me is whether or not Christians should care about Obama’s statements about his own faith. Surely, a lot of people who attend church were persuaded to vote for the man who appeared at Saddleback, but, Christian or not, Obama hardly espouses any beliefs that should make Christians qua Christians want to support him.
He is stridently anti-life, from his defence of allowing viable babies to die to his attack on Gianna Jessen and his belief that babies are punishments, not miracles. In fact, Obama thinks that the entire abortion debate is “above his pay grade”. While I’m willing to concede that some Christians are anti-abortion but politically pro-choice – recognising the moral wrong of abortion but unwilling to criminalise it – Obama is anti-life and pro-abortion.
In Christian theology, life issues are fundamental: man cannot just decide to end the life, no matter how inconvenient, of another man, since all are the image of God and loved dearly by Him. Oddly, with Obama, that isn’t the biggest anti-faith issue; that is reserved for Obama believing himself not just to be the human image of his Creator, but to be that Creator. As the indomitable Queen of Swords said, this whole Messiah/parting waters business should embarrass any actual Christian, who would be humiliated at the comparison between a sinner and the Son of God. But Obama embraces it.
Thee man who shrouds the actual Messiah and talks about parting the waters does not extend the same respect to his own family . While Obama became a wealthy nationally-recognised figure, his aunt was on welfare in Boston and his brother lived in poverty in Kenya (and still does) – like living on a few hundred dollars a year abject poverty. His brother’s keeper, Obama is not. Obama does not fare better with strangers: even the New York Times reported that Obama gave more money to charity as he ran for President and most of those “charitable donations” went to Rev. Wright’s racist church:
The Obamas’ returns are striking on a number of levels. They show that the couple made very few charitable contributions, sometimes less than 1 percent of taxable income, until Mr. Obama began his run for the White House.
When the New York Times calls a liberal out like that, you know it’s bad. This is also the same Barack Obama who wanted to (or still wants to) put charities, many of which are religious, under the control of the federal government. I’m sure that Mr. Constitutional Law is well aware that if charities were run by the government, the Establishment Clause would destroy their religious missions.
Could the man, despite all this, be Christian? In a quantum-mechanical, “all things are possible depending on the probabilty density of the electron cloud” way, perhaps. In a “Only God knows the heart of Man” way, perhaps. In any way that is meaningful to Christians who vote their values? Hell, no.
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