Obama plays the God card
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Sorry to link to such distasteful sources, but I was reading some political news today and found a couple of right-wing sites discussing a flyer Obama recently released to court Kentucky voters.
CBN: Obama and the Cross
Race42008: Barack Obama’s pitch in Kentucky (contains images of the flyer in question)
CBN wonders if publicizing his Christianity like this will help Obama’s image by making him seem less “elitist”. The commenters at Race42008 are crying foul, and don’t seem willing to believe Obama is “really” religious, as if right-wing nutjobs have some kind of exclusive right to religion.
I haven’t heard what other atheists think about this, but I can see how it would make some people a bit nervous. It’s no secret that Obama is a Christian (or at least it shouldn’t be to anyone who’s been paying attention) and he is campaigning in a country that’s mostly Christian, so of course he was going to bring it up at some point. That in itself doesn’t bother me. What I wanted to know was, what does the flyer say? I’m happy to say that Obama didn’t disappoint me.
The front side of the flyer has Obama standing behind a pulpit, in front of a lighted cross. The top reads Faith. Hope. Change. Barack Obama for President.
At the bottom right, we have a quote:
My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.
–Barack Obama
In other words, “hands that help are better than lips that pray.” Well played!
On the other side, Obama establishes his Christian creds: A picture of him next to a stained-glass church window in full-on “hope mode“, a red banner down the side reading Committed Christian
, and a story about how he was volunteering in the South Side after graduating from college and forged a profound connection
with the people living there, who encouraged him to visit a local church (I think we all know which one! 
), where he felt a beckoning of the spirit
and became a Christian. Finally, the requisite picture of him with his wife and daughters, and voter information.
If this is the kind of religious posturing we can expect from him, I say posture away. It’ll be good for everybody to realize that the likes of Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps are not the only religious authorities in this country.
Tags: Atheism, Christianity, Good Religion!, Obama, Politics
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3 Responses to “Obama plays the God card”
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Huh… are Hillary and John atheists then? I haven’t heard anything about anyone’s beliefs… I’m ignorant…
Merry’s last blog post: Trash Talking & John Stuart Mill -
Merry: I consider Obama’s Christian status so obvious because there have been not one but two major “scandals” directly relating to it: first, the “zomg Obama is a secret Muslim!” thing, which he has had to counter on multiple occasions by saying “no, I’m a Christian”, and then the Rev. Wright controversy, centering on the fact that Wright is a nutcase and Obama is a member of his church.
As for the other two, Wikipedia says Hillary was raised United Methodist (hey! just like me!) and McCain was raised Episcopalian and is now a Baptist. As far as I know neither of them has had their religion come into the spotlight the way Obama has.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I agree; Obama plays his religion really well. Things like this, and his Abraham and Isaac speech…
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2008/03/obama-bible-and-separation-of-church.html
I think it’s really good that strongly religious people have a candidate like this that they feel they can vote for. He even manages to make secularism sound Christian.
I’ll be very interested to see what happens to polling data the day after the first debate.