Obama Works to Redefine Role of Faith in First 100 Days

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land has worked with presidential administrations going back to Ronald Reagan’s, but he can’t remember any that has convened an advisory council composedimostly of religious leaders, as President Obama has done. The council gives religion “an institutionally higher profile than under President Bush,” says the conservative Land, who directs public policy
for the nation’s largest evangelical denomination. “No president that I’ve dealt with has had anything like it.”

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Posted in * Culture-Watch, * Economics, Politics, Office of the President, Politics in General, President Barack Obama, Religion & Culture

11 comments on “Obama Works to Redefine Role of Faith in First 100 Days

  1. libraryjim says:

    From what I’ve seen, Obama is working to create an inter-faith grouip as effective as the National Council of Churches, one that will eradicate or limit public display of Christian expression, as noted by his administrations a) vetting proposed public prayers to make sure no mention of Jesus is included and b) ordering references to Jesus covered in venues where he is to appear.

    The only reason Rick Warren was given so much latitude in the inauguration was payback for the Saddleback Presidential forum. Everyone else, toe the line!

  2. Dilbertnomore says:

    There is no aspect of our life that Obama won’t try to inflitrate. God help us.

  3. Crypto Papist says:

    [i] Unnecessarily sarcastic comment deleted by elf. [/i]

  4. Juandeveras says:

    The operative phrase in the story would appear to be “faith-based symbolism”. One of this man’s earliest signatures was to re-invigorate the Planned Parenthood franchise worldwide with taxpayer dollars, to back up his new HHS secretary’s support for partial birth abortion ( in Kansas and anywhere else ) and to incorporate Muslim organizations into the faith-based tent. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in some mosque which received federal funds and was forced to hire a gay Christian janitor in order to get the bread.

  5. tgs says:

    A man is known by his actions and Obama’s actions are anti- Christian. Having been raised in the Muslim faith in his formative years, I have to believe that he is a Muslim at heart.

  6. Franz says:

    To #4 — I’d disagree. The President’s actions and rhetoric suggests that he is a secular humanist, or a moralistic theraputic deist, who uses religious language to appeal to certain elements of the body politic when it suits him.

    I’d love to know what evidence you have that he was ever raised in the Muslim faith. From what I can tell, that’s something neither his mother nor his grandparents would have done, and they were the ones who raised him.

  7. Jeffersonian says:

    That doesn’t take into account the years he spent in Indonesia, where he was officially declared a Muslim on his identification documents.

  8. Katherine says:

    He was a little kid, Jeffersonian, with a stepfather who was by report not a very serious Muslim. I don’t like the guy much either, but let’s be reasonable about the Muslim thing. I’d agree more with #5, Franz.

  9. Jeffersonian says:

    True, Katherine, but are not the vast majority of persons being “raised” actually children? Obama went to a school that was Muslim (but not considered a madrassa) for four years. True, let’s not go overboard on what it means, but let’s not poo-poo it, either.

  10. Jeffersonian says:

    I inadvertantly erred in my last post….Obama spent two of those years at the Muslim school, another two at a Catholic school.

  11. Katherine says:

    All in all, Jeffersonian, I don’t see much evidence that Obama was ever seriously Muslim, and based upon his accounts of his faith and his church affiliation, I don’t see much evidence that he’s a creedal Christian either. I think, rather, that’s he’s grounded in a left-leaning social gospel of corporate, that is, governmental, good works detached from the doctrines of any of the faiths.