Do I even have to tell you who’s posting “Where in the World Is Barack Obama? Well, he’s not at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s south side this morning.” at prime church-going time on a Sunday morning?
Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha.
That’s the trouble with electing yourself to the God police. Sometimes the work requires you to commit the very sins you’re trying to eradicate.
Tiny Cat Pants 
It really disturbs me that people are happy about a man having to leave his church. One’s choice of church is a very personal decision; one’s relationship with one’s church is a very intimate one.
To be forced to leave a church for political reasons is sickening to me.
At times like these, I recall Matthew 23: 2-9, 13.
“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.”
But you know, hey…whatever. That’s just the Bible, which has no relevant cautions to offer those looking to score big political points with Scripture-loving people.
As one who was forced out of a church…I feel for him today.
wouldn’t it be nice if we had some kind of separation of church and state? or at least gave up subjecting candidates for public office to religious tests? naah… much too modern, newfangled ideas for this country.
Me, I’m still waiting to find out what those heavy burdens are. People keep telling me I’m bearing them. With about as much accuracy, I would guess, as the complainers who have forced Obama out of the church that was a spiritual home to him.
I have always interpreted the “heavy burden” as having to bear up under the sanctimonious judgment of the ostentatiously godly. That’s not what’s meant by “doing God’s work…”
I feel no sympathy. His church of twenty years was no longer… convenient for him.
Mr Hope and Change is nothing more than a typical politician.
Well, Bridgett, my whole point is that we all interpret both our own and others’ religious teachings in our own contexts. I’m completely clear about (and comfortable with) what you mean by quoting that text. But there is a significant number of people who meet me and want to know how I bear up to my dreadful, dreadful burdens, based on the same text and their own context. And the number of people who were ready to swear up and down that Obama’s former church teaches hatred of whites did surprise me (since, in my context, that isn’t what was being said there), but clearly has had an impact on what he finds it politic to do.
Lee, I guess your ideal politician is the one who sticks to her/his guns so tightly that s/he can’t win?
I’m with Lee on this one. No one forced Obama to denounce Wright, no one forced him to justify the pointless corporate media hullabaloo over the rantings of Michael Pfleger (who has done some wonderful work for his community, and who should not be judged solely by his recent goof attack), and no one forced him to leave his church.
If anyone needed to be disabused of any notions about the value Obama placed on his chosen house of worship, I suppose the third time is the charm.
But seriously, folks, even Obama supporters should be a little nervous about their candidate’s tap-dancing to the Right Wing Noise Machine’s tune. Trying to appease Straw Men that are set up by the rabid attack dogs of the opposition (and dutifully propped up and displayed by the corporate media) is a losing strategy. Depending on the Straw Man in question, it also speaks poorly of Obama’s integrity. (Which, I think, is part of the point of attacking him by association. If he stands by the verbal ‘offender’, he is accused of holding that offender’s views. If he rejects the offender, his supporters are forced to either acknowledge his lack of integrity or join the demonization bandwagon. A better strategy might have been to reject the controversy without justifying it, i.e. ‘Wright/Pfleger/Whomever is free to speak for himself. If you have problems with what he says, he is also free to answer for himself. Now kindly go fuck yourself, then get back to bird-dogging Britney Spears’ panties.”)
nm, this phrase puzzles me:
What are the “guns” in this expression? Are they his personal values? His religious values? If these guns are abandoned in response to a corporate media hatchet job, is this the person you really want in the Oval Office?
My understanding was the Obama felt the attention brought to the church because of his presence was damaging the church. It was also casting perhaps unfavorable lights on Obama (although I don’t really see evidence it has hurt him), but I believe the harm to the church was a large factor in his decision to leave.
And I, for one, am highly amused by Aunt B.’s point about Hobbs posting about not going to church while apparently not going to church himself.
CS, in this case the guns are a church he is too busy to attend these days anyway. I suppose I have reservations about the personal integrity of anyone who is able to be a successful candidate for office, at a wider than local level, for any extended period of time. The compromises that repeated election campaigns call for are sometimes going to be ones I don’t like, in the context of personal ethics. But I also don’t think that every aspect of personal ethics is relevant to how good a legislator or administrator a candidate is going to be. I might really, really want someone to be my senator or president who I would never want as my friend, because those people would not compromise the ethics of doing what they had promised for their constituents while violating all sorts of ethical standards that matter to me on a personal level.
In other words, I don’t want to be buddies with my candidates, I don’t want to have a beer with them. I want them to be good at the job I’m voting for them for.
I think it is important, NM, to distinguish between personal ethics and public ethics. If Obama is too busy to attend the church anyway, why bother with making a public break? It’s like Pontius Pilate making a public show of washing his hands. In other words, the ‘compromises’ that Obama has made in this extended, contrived episode were very public ones. He was making calculated responses to a calculated smear campaign. The substance (or lack thereof) of the attacks is less important than Obama’s triangulating responses.
I wouldn’t pay it any mind if it weren’t part of a larger pattern I’ve seen from Obama, one that makes all his talk of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ seem like a really insulting joke. I’ve taken a look at his campaign advisers; I’ve listened to his foreign policy rhetoric; and all I see is another Clintonian who can score with the lofty rhetoric as long as he doesn’t have to talk specifics. When he gets to that point, I either glaze over or instinctively secure my wallet.
It’s all academic, anyway. Assuming that Obama is the lucky snowball who makes it through the hell of racism, vote suppression, electoral fraud, etc. this fall, he’ll spend the next four years compromising his well-spoken ass off (to keep his corporate benefactors happy, of course). And if you think the Republicans (especially their more reactionary elements) are down right now, wait until they get a negro Democrat in the Oval Office. The upsurge in right-wing violence and legislative insurgence we’ll see then will make the stuff Clinton faced seem like a harsh glance.
The only real ‘hope’ we have is to get people in power who can do more than talk about change. People who have demonstrated that doing the right thing is more important than getting elected and holding onto power. Of course, that would mean we (the electorate) would have to be savvy and courageous enough to support such candidates. I’m not holding my breath.
maybe he’s making a bid for those of us voters who’d rather see more candidates not attending churches at all? sure, he’s a day late and a dollar short, but if he joins Americans United for the Separation of Church and State on top, maybe it’ll work.
ha. ha, ha. hahahaHEEhawhahahaaa…
who’d rather see more candidates not attending churches at all
Well, I’d like for it to stop being an issue, frankly. I’d love to see fewer (i.e. no) photo ops on the steps of this or that house of worship, fewer (ideally no) articles and opinion pieces about how “real” the candidate’s Christianity is, how much of a threat their spiritual leaders would be to the health of the nation, etc.
But I would like to think that the true separation of church and state would mean that any candidates were free to worship as they saw fit.
I think it is important, NM, to distinguish between personal ethics and public ethics.
??? Is there such a distinction to be made, truly?
If Obama is too busy to attend the church anyway, why bother with making a public break?
It’s not uncommon in many denominations for church members to officially “resign” their memberships in writing, often even requesting a letter of good standing from their former pastor to present to their new pastor.
What’s really disturbed me in all this is the recurring argument that Obama must agree with all the negative his former pastor has said since he attended the church. I’ve never bought into the notion that church-goers are sheep-like people who blindly buy into whatever they hear from the pulpit, but based on the response (from mostly church-going folks no less), that apparently is far more common than I thought.
Kat, I think there is a difference. Largely in the “you can’t make an omelette …” sense. There are compromises that one would never make in one’s personal actions (say, having an abortion) that one might make in one’s public, political life (voting to keep abortions legal for those who want them, say). There are still lines that ought not be crossed, but they are not the same lines.
As for Dolphin’s point, it’s true only for other people whose politics one dislikes.
There are compromises that one would never make in one’s personal actions (say, having an abortion) that one might make in one’s public, political life (voting to keep abortions legal for those who want them, say).
Ahhh, I see. The reason I left politics, I guess. Not the abortion thing, but the whole idea, in general, of compromising my libertarian principles in order to be a part of an elected body that is no longer a servant of the people but a sort of cherry-picked ruling class.
Well, I’m gonna have to disagree with you and CS about that one. In a friendly way, of course.
Believe me, I’ve long since accepted the fact that my political philosophy is curmudgeonly enough as to invite open disagreement.
It’s not curmudgeonly, it’s just different from mine.
A possible way to open our political discourse to the really diverse political spectrum of the (potential) electorate is to support a more parliamentary face to our government. That doesn’t require changing the Constitution, it just requires more of us drop-kicking the two major parties. As long as we allow our choices to remain artificially narrowed as they are now, then we will have what I think Katherine Coble accurately describes as a “cherry-picked ruling class.”
I’m doing my part by voting Green this November.