Denying Obama His Faith
John Schmalzbauer
Posted: 10.01.2008 / 4:05 PM PDT
Things are getting ugly in the Evangelical Epicenters. In a campaign already plagued by attack ads and viral emails, some evangelicals are spreading a nasty allegation: Contrary to his own testimony, Barack Obama is not a Christian and may even be the Antichrist.
After John McCain ran an advertisement dubbing Senator Obama “the One,” some commentators accused the McCain campaign of fueling the Antichrist rumor. At the time, I dismissed these claims as paranoia.
I changed my mind after visiting a Nixa store to pick up some milk. As I paid for my purchase, the teenager behind the counter announced that Barack Obama was the Antichrist, just like Napoleon and Hitler before him. A self-proclaimed student of biblical prophecy, she was fairly confident about this theory.
Such wild speculation can also be found in the September 2008 issue of The Ozarks Christian News, a publication distributed in Nixa and the surrounding communities. In “Obama the Antichrist?”, conservative activist Gary Cass discusses an email claiming that the Illinois Senator is the dreaded figure. Rather than debunking these claims, Cass ticks off the characteristics he associates with the biblical Antichrist. According to Cass, “He will deny the god of his fathers. In other words, he refuses to be a ‘Muslim,’ or whatever.” While noting that the Democratic candidate “is hardly unique,” Cass acknowledges that ”Obama has been described as fitting this description.”
It turns out that Cass is not an Ozarker, but the director of the Florida-based Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. In September 2008 the Commission launched an online video series detailing the “7 Reasons why Barack Obama is Not a Christian.” A September 24th press release urges supporters to “get this video in front of as many people as possible.”
A better title might be “7 Reasons why Barack Obama is Not a Conservative Christian,” for the first two videos focus largely on beliefs distinctive to evangelicals, such as the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Video #1 criticizes Obama’s belief (paraphrased by a reporter) that “all people of faith - Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone - know the same God.” By that test, many Catholics and mainline Protestants would not be classified as Christians, including President George W. Bush. In 2007 Bush told a Middle Eastern news organization that “all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God,” adding that “I believe that the God that the Muslim prays to is the same God that I pray to.”
In making their case, the people at the Commission draw on an interview Obama did with Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani. This is ironic given that Falsani recently published a column defending Obama’s Christian faith. In “I Have Faith That Obama Has Faith,” Falsani writes that it is “dangerous to try to judge the quality of a man’s faith. That is God’s purview, not ours.”
Several prominent evangelicals have vouched for Obama’s Christianity, including Stephen Mansfield, author of The Faith of Barack Obama and an earlier biography of George W. Bush. A self-described conservative pro-lifer, Mansfield says that Barack Obama is “a Christian without question.” While critical of some of Obama’s policy positions, Mansfield argues that “there have been some pretty striking myths circulating out there that are very unfair.”
Like Mansfield, some residents of the Evangelical Epicenters are fed up with these attacks. While some question whether the book of Revelation can be used to interpret current events, others are disgusted by efforts to kick Obama out of the Christian community.
Ironically, the smears against Barack Obama have caused some to question the Christian faith of his attackers. In the words of a lifelong Ozarker: “I have no desire to be associated with these people in any fashion. And, I have a difficult time believing that the ‘God’ they worship is the same God I believe in. It’s not the same faith. Nothing. In. Common.”
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:04 am
I find it appalling, the role that religion of any stripe has come to have in national politics in a nation founded by deists and built on a separation of church and state.
The fractious role of religion in American politics over the last 50 or 60 years seems to be intensifying, and this election in particular points to how often it is a thinly veiled excuse for racism. I trace much of this influence back to the amendment of the Pledge of Allegiance to include the words “under God.”
A couple of years ago I moved from the Los Angeles area to a rural Evangelical Epicenter (heavily LDS) for economic reasons. While I know many solid and intelligent people here, I also am astonished at some of the downright crazy and ignorant beliefs of others — often beliefs that are far outside the scope of their own mainstream churches.
In my area I think a fear of change, and especially of the slipping control of Old White Men with Entitlement Complexes is a major factor. Religion is often used as a tool of oppression for anyone who does not fit that description.
Ironically, the local religious leaders are often the very image of the ruling class the American colonists threw off when the country split from England. One thing this Evangelical Epicenter has in common with Orange County, California, is the use of religion to control the wealth and power in these fiefs. I think religion accounts for much of the voting against one’s own interest in this country
Some people need to spend more time reading The Federalist Papers and less time reading self-proclaimed religious publications, at least as far as elections are concerned.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I find “PW’s” diatribe against the “Evangelical Epicenter” typical of Leftist, Liberal, anti-religious, former Los Angelinos.
His ignorance of the role of “religion” in this country is stereotypic of someone who has imbibed pulp liberal, revisionist fiction about the so-called Constitutional separation of church and state and the tendency of religious people to be racist. (Of course, Jeremiah Wright does fit the latter stereotype.)
I lived in Malibu, California, and now live in Nixa, Missouri. I came to Nixa with a different experiential point of view. In Malibu, I witnessed the arrogant contempt for Christianity (but not Judaism or Islam) of the elitist movers and shakers. I saw the Stalinist tactics to suppress the presence of Christianity along Pacific Coast Highway and environs.
Local politicians knew that any pro-religious (aka pro-Christian) decisions could cost them their office — and certainly a dinner invite to Streisand’s hideaway estate.
To paraphrase PW, I saw that “Irreligion is often used as tool of oppression for anyone who does not fit that description.”
At least among the few Christians in Malibu and among the serious Christians in Nixa, good things were and are being done for the welfare of the community.
I’ve not seen many progressive, atheist, liberals start food-banks or shelters for abused women, build hospitals and pro-life pregnancy centers, or engage in racial reconciliation programs. They didn’t oppose slavery with their lives in the 19th century.
Today, anti-religious liberals hypocritically pander to win the devotion of religious Blacks and Hispanics so they can take the reins of power and transform the U.S. into a non-religious (aka godless) society where the Elite will firmly control religious fools and other miserables and build a paradise of soulless beings.
PW bemoans the “fractious role of religion in American politics.” In contrast, I bemoan a political establishment where religion is further suppressed, as he would have it. We’ve seen that already in the Soviet Union and China. Man, what a glorious thing they have done for the human race.
October 8th, 2008 at 10:27 am
It is ironic that evangelicals reference Hitler when speaking about Obama when it is the dogmatic Christian right that I find almost as frightening as the Nazis!
October 8th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I agree that PW is far too negative about the potential for civil, public religious discourse in America. Though the vicious rumors spread about Obama are an example of religious fractiousness, there is also plenty of thoughtful discourse emanating from faith communities on the left and the right. You can see both in the Nixa area.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
hey paul
lumping every one you hate together is easy
but disingenuous.
i live in los angeles and i know that there are zealots
on both sides but the righties really seem to be
the bigger whiners.
persection,dicrimination,blah,blah,blah.
if you act foolish you will be called on it.
thats the california way.
dont like it stay away.
real freedom is tolerance of others
not crying because everyone else is not just like you
October 14th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
There is a tendency of those who have no real knowledge of history to glom onto revisionist history which attempts to attribute ownership of this country to “christians.” It never seems to occur to these people that if God wanted to establish a place for freedom of religion, since the Scriptures say that God loves all his children equally, He would necessarily want freedom for all ways in which His children worship Him.
The first commenter seems unaware that “evangelical Christians” include liberals, progressives, and other people whom he attempts to label as worthless. tsk tsk What would Jesus say?