Ann Coulter’s column today argues that Obama is not a Muslim; rather, he ”is obviously an atheist.” The gist of the argument is “The only evidence for Obama’s Christianity is that he faithfully attended the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for 20 years….Attending Wright’s church is the conscious, calculated decision to immerse yourself in hate-filled demagoguery and call it ‘Christianity.’”
I disagree with both the facts and the conclusion. Coulter is accurate in calling Jeremiah Wright ”a racist nut.” However, that does not prove that Wright (and by extension Obama, to whatever extent Obama believes in Wright’s theology) is not a Christian. Some practitioners of “liberation theology” (including the black liberation theology variant) may simply be Marxists looking for some broadly-appealing rhetoric to add to their political program. Other practitioners, however, may be sincerely and otherwise-orthodox Christians who truly believe in both Christianity and Marxism, and in the liberation theology fusion of the two. For example, liberation theology was popular among many Catholics in Latin America from the late 1960s until 1984, when it was condemned by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I think it is implausible to believe that, pre-1984, the many Latin American American bishops, priests, nuns, and Catholic lay people who embraced liberation theology were all closet atheists. It seems much more reasonable to conclude that at least some of them were orthodox Catholics who, until 1984, could consider liberation theology to be one legitimate way of expressing the Catholic faith.
Similarly, I would suggest that many of the pastors in slave states in antebellum America who taught that slavery was legitimate because of the slaves’ inherent racial inferiority were also sincere Christians, albeit grossly mistaken in their teachings on this matter.
Ergo, belief in the racist, Marxist philosophy of black liberation theology is not necessarily incompatible with being a Christian who has orthodox beliefs on most matters of Christian doctrine (e.g., the trinity, the resurrection, virgin birth, and so on).
Second, the record of President Obama’s Christianity is not limited to his record of attendance at Reverend Wright’s nut-house. For example, this year, the President spoke at a prayer breakfast on Easter Sunday, on what the resurrection means to him personally. His remarks about “the Easter celebration of our risen Savior…and what lesson I take from Christ’s sacrifice” were entirely straightforward statements of orthodox Christianity. I doubt that any normal Christian, of whatever denomination, could theologically disagree with a single word President Obama said.
A. Nonnimous says:
Obama tells a story in Audacity of Hope. His daughter asked him, “What happens after we die.” And his response was that she shouldn’t worry about it. But then he wondered whether he should have told her the “truth”, and his “truth” is that he doesn’t know what happens after death.
Certainly that’s not an orthodox position, and it strikes me as more an atheist position than a Christian one. Wouldn’t you say so, too? An orthodox Christian position would include some assertion of life after death.
And it’s more likely to be closer to his true personal belief than some remarks he makes for public consumption at a prayer breakfast.
[DK: That's an interesting point. I guess I'd say that your interpretation is not implausible, although to be precise, "don't know" is more agnostic than atheist. On the other hand, Obama's words to his daughter are not inconsistent with the feelings of many sincere Christians for whom their general faith still leaves them with lots of uncertainty, especially about things as murky as the afterlife--as opposed to more straightforward topics such as standards of ethical behavior during earthly life.]
September 1, 2010, 9:04 pmKamal says:
Why use “Liberation Theology” to describe Obama (a term heavily promoted by Beck) when Obama himself doesn’t use it to describe his views? What positive substance are you adding to our public civil debate by using loaded terms like this?
[DK: By Wright's description, Trinity United's teachings are explicitly founded on the black liberation theology teachings of that theology's founder, James Cone.
September 1, 2010, 9:06 pmhttp://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/03/20/31079/obamas-church-pushes-controversial.html.
As I acknowledged in the post, it's uncertain exactly how much of Trinity's teachings that Obama accepted, but it seems to me unlikely that someone would spends 20 years in a single church, especially a church based on a personality cult around one long-term pastor, while not agreeing with most of what was preached from the pulpit.]
Kamal says:
That response doesn’t reveal anything about his religion. Not claiming certainty in your beliefs reveals, if anything, rationality.
September 1, 2010, 9:08 pmValentine Michael Smith says:
Did you know that I am a Martian? No, seriously! I claim to be a Martian. I even wear this little helmet thinger with antennae strapped to it, don’t you see?
What’s that you say, I’m not a Martian because I act like a New Yorker? and that I’ve likely never ever left the Bronx?
Doesn’t matter. I say I’m a Martian, so you’ve no choice but believe me.
Now, grok me!
September 1, 2010, 9:10 pmArthur Kirkland says:
No person knows, just as no person has ever known, what happens (with respect to the formerly living) after death.
September 1, 2010, 9:10 pmSteve says:
It’s not like every black church features rhetoric akin to Rev. Wright’s, but he’s hardly a unique creature, ever. And of course there are plenty of white fire and brimstone preachers, as well. Last year a pastor in Arizona made headlines by admitting that he regularly prays for Obama’s death. Is everyone who attends one of these churches to be cast out of the big tent of Christianity? Somehow I think Coulter is applying a special rule for Obama only.
September 1, 2010, 9:10 pmStephen Lathrop says:
A remarkably unrestrained assertion. You have a chance to win me to that position, but I would like to see some examples in full context to bolster it. I was unhappy with the coverage during the campaign, because in the little snippets that played over and over you couldn’t tell whether Wright was condemning America unrestrainedly, or in historical context. If it’s the latter, then your own comment may be over the line. It’s hard, for me anyway, to find fault with a black person who condemns the Constitution as it originally was. I don’t have any confidence that the media coverage of Wright provides enough information to know what he believes, or what he may have been referencing with his various notorious quotations.
September 1, 2010, 9:11 pmKamal says:
People like taking little small quotes from this guy and blowing it up. Like the edited acorn videos and edited Sharon Sherrod tapes have reiterated, you can easily take small blurbs and make them seem controversial. Unless you have a presumption that Obama is likewise “a racist nut”, or simply not as observant as Kopel is, then he should have recognized Wright as “a racist nut” and left the church. So does Kopel think he is “a racist nut” or not as observant as he is?
The reality is Obama, if you don’t think he is a racist nut, probably saw the context of Wright’s speech and listened to the entire message, and that message is not what Kopel implies.
September 1, 2010, 9:18 pmFausto says:
I think Coulter’s column was a little tongue-in-cheek. Nevertheless, if I had to bet on it, I would say Obama probably is an atheist. I don’t base that on his association with Jeremiah Wright, but rather on his whole body of work. He just comes across as someone who would find religion and “God” kind of silly. I am not persuaded at all by his having attended church or his assertions that he is a Christian; so much else of what he does and says is plainly calculated to appeal to particular people for political purposes. Why would this be any different? He probably knows that being an avowed atheist likely would preclude his being elected, so he says what he thinks needs to be said.
September 1, 2010, 9:21 pmGuy says:
I think it’s safe to say that there are a lot of closeted nonbelievers in government, I would probably pretend to be Christian if I were a politician (since, if I were a politician, I would presumably want to be elected). I’m not saying Obama is agnostic, but he’s as good a candidate for speculation as any.
September 1, 2010, 9:21 pmGuy says:
I think Ann Coulter’s entire public existence is a little tongue-in-cheek, but maybe I’m giving her too much credit.
September 1, 2010, 9:23 pmNickM says:
Heterodox Christianity is still Christianity.
Nick
[DK: I generally agree, although there can be a point at which there's so much hetero and so little ortho that it stops being Christian, except by idiosyncratic self-definition. My point in the post, though, is that Obama is an orthodox Christian.]
September 1, 2010, 9:23 pmKamal says:
Well, her profession is sophistry, so her motives aren’t as interesting as her goals.
September 1, 2010, 9:26 pmmerevaudevillian says:
While I agree that Coulter, and others, have badly missed the mark when criticizing Obama’s faith, I think there are genuine reasons to believe that he is not an orthodox Christian (as, I think, there are genuine reasons to believe that George W. Bush is not an orthodox Christian). Both Bush and Obama, for instance, believe that Muslims and Christians pray to the same God; orthodox Christianity would reject that a Muslim praying to Allah is praying to a trinitarian God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So, while both Bush and Obama may well call themselves “Christians,” they are, I think, at least from their public pronouncements concerning faith, more likely spiritualists who tend to worship in a Christian-based environment.
But, as faith-based statements are as often based on political or international relations as they may be based on personal convictions, it would be quite difficult to take any such statements at face value.
Perhaps delving into the actual tenets of their theology, then, is not necessarily the most fruitful task.
[DK: I disagree with the conclusion. Among orthodox Christians, it's indisputable that Jews and Christians worship the same God--namely the God who is the main character in what Christians call the Old Testament. Muslims understand themselves as worshiping that very same God, the God who spoke to Abraham. Christians think that this God is triune, whereas Jews and Muslims disagree. "Same God" doesn't have to mean a common agreement about a very important aspect of that God's nature.
Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have both said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. E.g., http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=3062&lan=en&sid=1&sp=0. While a sincere Christian might disagree with these Popes, I think it is not plausible to claim that a person's agreement with these two Popes is evidence that the person is not an orthodox Christian.]
September 1, 2010, 9:27 pmSMatthewStolte says:
First, I agree with David Kopel on this, I can speak as someone trained in theology (though I haven’t published anything and, when I do, it will probably be for philosophy).
I also think it is important to make a distinction, here, as well. It is quite possible for one of the baptized to be, let’s say, heretical, and thereby to hold beliefs incompatible with Christian teaching. But accounting for his views might still require a largely Christian context. Anyone within the church, who has a stake in the definition of Christianity, would understandably want to say: That’s not *real* Christianity! A Catholic theologian might say that a fundamentalist Baptist has really failed to capture the essence of Christianity (or vice versa), but no sociologist of religion could reasonably deny that they are two distinct denominations of Christianity.
My opinion is that trying to understand Mr Obama as an atheistic secularist will really distort what he is about, but I do think that understanding him in the context of the tradition of liberation theology is much more promising. For those who would like to say, vociferously, that this is not real Christianity, I would at least think they would be willing to consider that it might be distorted Christianity. And this would be no evidence that such beliefs are insincerely held.
September 1, 2010, 9:27 pmKamal says:
After someone at work told me they believed Colbert really was conservative and wasn’t being tongue in cheek, I was thinking how funny it would be if Coulter and Glen Beck came out as Colbert clones who were just playing a joke on the most gullible.
September 1, 2010, 9:28 pmKamal says:
Yeah, “liberation theology” sounds way scarier.
September 1, 2010, 9:29 pmmattski says:
Don’t you mean “agnostic” rather than “atheist”? And are all Christians orthodox? (I know all Jews aren’t!)
If I’m not mistaken, Thomas Huxley (aka Darwin’s Bulldog) fully considered himself a Christian. He also made a point of saying that the value of Christian teachings was moral and not ontological.
September 1, 2010, 9:33 pmDG says:
Kamal:
I would be hard pressed to share with you the content of just about any sermon that my rabbi ever gave, except for one or two that showed such a poor grasp of law and economics, that several people in the audience were shaking their heads. I didn’t up and quit, though – even though I disagreed, you are allowed to disagree. Also, my kid really liked the shul, and I thought the other members were nice.
There are lots of reasons to belong to a house of worship, other than your agreement or disagreement with a clergyman. Wright is a racist idiot – his writings are clear proof of that. We’re not talking soundbites – this is all well documented. Do your own research here. However, I doubt Obama was listening too closely, or cared too much. Church for him, as for many (most?) is social, and singing, and family, and not about sermons.
September 1, 2010, 9:38 pmA. Nonnimous says:
To Kamal and Kirkland:
The Resurrection of Jesus destroyed death. This is the fundamental aspect of Christianity.
Let me draw a distinction between being a Christian and being called a Christian. Someone who does not believe in life after death can no more be a Christian (though he can be called one) than a person who advocates abortion can be a Catholic (though he can be called one).
If Obama does not believe in life after death, then he is not a Christian.
September 1, 2010, 9:38 pmDG says:
{After someone at work told me they believed Colbert really was conservative and wasn’t being tongue in cheek, ….}
This is a shockingly common belief. A cousin by marriage of mine absolutely insists that he’s serious, and that the comedy aspect is some kind of act. I almost laughed out loud as she laid out this belief, but she was really serious. I can’t explain it.
September 1, 2010, 9:40 pmArthur Kirkland says:
If you are saying his gullibility is relatively limited, that strikes me as a point in his favor.
September 1, 2010, 9:41 pmByomtov says:
But then he wondered whether he should have told her the “truth”, and his “truth” is that he doesn’t know what happens after death.
I don’t understand why “truth” is in quotes here. It is the truth. It is an absolute fact that he doesn’t know. Neither do you or I or the Pope. We may all have beliefs, but pretending to know that which is unknowable does not strike me as an example of piety.
September 1, 2010, 9:41 pmBenjamin Morris says:
The first point seems like fairly uninteresting semantics, and I think Coulter has the better side of the argument. Whether or not you tag it with the term “Christianity,” the point is that that particular set of theological beliefs doesn’t really resemble the theological beliefs of most Christians in this country — and, in fact, many Christians would consider them atheistic.
On the second point — of whether there is other evidence that Obama is an “actual” Christian, speaking at a public prayer breakfast is pretty thin gruel, as that’s basically a part of the President’s job description. I’m not saying there isn’t more information out there — I really don’t care about the issue and haven’t scoured the news looking for evidence one way or the other — but that particular data point is not very meaningful.
September 1, 2010, 9:41 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Anyone who “knows” it to be true doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
September 1, 2010, 9:45 pmtheculturedredneck says:
it may be that obama is a genuine christian. what seems plain to me is that he’s not the SORT of christian he presented himself to be during his campaign.
September 1, 2010, 9:55 pmKamal says:
Well, we each have different values. In many churches, they still speak out saying homosexuality is a sin. I can see that in many places, no one would shake their head. That doesn’t validate their beliefs.
September 1, 2010, 9:55 pmKamal says:
His beliefs are not being discussed in your first statement. You were taking issue to him not *knowing* there is life after death. not him *believing*. If you are overly concerned with faith, as opposed to knowledge, I can understand how those two appear similar.
September 1, 2010, 9:57 pmJoe says:
There is a new book entitled ¡SATIRISTAS!, a collection of interviews with comics and satirists — including Stephen Colbert — which some here might want to take a gander at.
Debating AC op-eds is not really worth our time, is it?
September 1, 2010, 10:04 pmPassing By says:
“If Obama does not believe in life after death, then he is not a Christian.”
Your platitude isn’t convincing. I’ve talked to priests and ministers who have wrestled with the issue, admitting periods of profound doubt.
“I think Coulter has the better side of the argument.”
You think Coulter’s unadulterated fiction has the better side of the argument over the substantial evidence of the President’s faith. Alrighty then….
“[I]t seems to me unlikely that someone would spends 20 years in a single church, especially a church based on a personality cult around one long-term pastor, while not agreeing with most of what was preached from the pulpit.”
Just in Obama’s case, or in every case? http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/519/
September 1, 2010, 10:04 pmerp says:
Whether he’s of one religion or the other or no religion at all doesn’t make any difference to me. My problem with Obama is that he isn’t an American and I don’t mean that in the legal sense of being a citizen of the U.S. He’s play acting at it and unfortunately isn’t very good at it.
September 1, 2010, 10:13 pmSteve says:
I don’t really agree that talking about the lessons he draws from Christ’s sacrifice is part of the President’s job description. If it is, we’ve had a lot of Presidents who haven’t done their job.
September 1, 2010, 10:13 pmKen Arromdee says:
I would suggest an intermediate position: Obama is not a nut like Wright, but Obama’s beliefs are slanted in Wright’s direction to the point where, while he doesn’t actually agree with Wright, he thinks of Wright as only slightly eccentric. not as a radical extremist.
September 1, 2010, 10:13 pmwhit says:
how rumsfeldian
September 1, 2010, 10:21 pmDebrah says:
I continue to be astonished by the gullibility of so many on this subject.
Obama joined Rev. Wright’s church in Chicago because it was/is the hot spot for “outreach” (translation: votes) among the movers and shakers of the black community.
It was a social-political move. As calculated and as cynical as things are in the world of politics.
Obama didn’t move so quickly up the ladder of the Chicago Machine as a result of his community organizing stint and helping old ladies rearrange their doilies.
Who cares what his religious beliefs are?
I’d say they are perhaps closer to being non-existent except for public consumption.
Next……
September 1, 2010, 10:22 pmwhit says:
there is nothing inconsistent with saying
– i don’t know what happens after we die, but i have faith that X is what happens
September 1, 2010, 10:24 pmByomtov says:
The most interesting thing about this post is that the craziness has spread so much that this topic is even being discussed.
September 1, 2010, 10:29 pmFloridan says:
Coulter has always known how to sell to the rubes.
September 1, 2010, 10:33 pmRoger the Shrubber says:
We atheists know that Obama is secretly one of us. He even gave us a “shout out” in his inaugural address:
We’ve never gotten a Presidential shout-out before, to my knowledge.
September 1, 2010, 10:37 pmCold Warrior says:
Another example of how certain members of born-again Christian groups (let’s call these Christian Wahabbists) claim the right to determine who is a “true” Christian and who is not. I come from a Catholic tradition, and it is understood and accepted that doubt is part of the human character. By Coulter’s account, St. Augustine (“doubt is but another element of faith”) was not a Christian. Neither was Mother Theresa (in writing to a friend, “Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.”)
Not only that. It is certainly possible to be a Christian in that one is a follower of Jesus without necessarily believing in the divinity of Jesus. Christianity as moral philosophy, not as religion.
I occasionally listen to Glenn Beck on the radio because I’m interested in the phenomenon that he’s become, and (quite frankly) because he is a good radio entertainer. A couple weeks ago he went off on a similar diatribe, questioning how Obama’s statement that to him Jesus is first “a historical figure” could comport with Beck’s understanding of what Christianity requires. A curious sentiment indeed coming from a Mormon, since many evangelical (and Catholic) churches question whether Mormons truly “count” as Christians. (I’m not saying they don’t; I’m just saying that everyone has a different Christianity litmus test.)
Being a “Christian” no doubt means many different things to many different people, and it strikes me as offensive that self-appointed Christianity testers see fit to question a man’s expressed commitment simply because it does not comport with theirs.
September 1, 2010, 10:39 pmAlex S. says:
While I’d be disappointed he had to lie to get elected, it would be a damn fine thing if he really is an atheist.
Watching heads explode all over the country in outrage would just be a bonus.
But, I have no doubt he believes in a god of some kind and if he feels his specific set of beliefs is sufficient for the label “Christian” then that is good enough for me. The less time he spends talking about his personal faith then the better as far as I’m concerned.
September 1, 2010, 10:50 pmgeokstr says:
Yes, don’t like it a bit when Rule #5 comes back to bite you in the keister, eh? Get used to it.
Most of us “rubes” find her to be hilarious, and love her to death for reducing leftists to screaming fits of spittle-flecked rage. You go girl.
September 1, 2010, 10:52 pmEvan says:
I agree (see John 3:13 for one), but that doesn’t seem to be what Obama was saying:
If I were trying to say what Whit was saying, I’d have actually said, “I have faith that X is what happens.” In this limited quote (Google Books isn’t letting me view this page; I pulled this sentence from here), Obama doesn’t seem to say it. Could someone who has the book please take a look at the broader context?
September 1, 2010, 10:53 pmwhit says:
he could have said “what happens after we die is a great mystery. i am a christian, and thus i believe that X. the reality is that i can’t say for sure what happens, but i can have faith that X happens”
or something like that.
September 1, 2010, 11:07 pmOrin Kerr says:
In the linked to article, Coulter states that “all liberals are atheists.” That seems to be the real argument: If you assume that all liberals are atheists, and Obama is a liberal, then “obviously” Obama is an atheist. So I don’t think there’s a whole lot more to take seriously in the article.
September 1, 2010, 11:09 pmwhit says:
exactly. she inspires the left to turn to authoritarian idiocy (not that they often need much prompting) in trying to silence her. whether it’s pies, or shoutdowns, etc. it just makes THEM look bad. that’s her greatest achievement.
September 1, 2010, 11:10 pmArthur Kirkland says:
That observation seems to apply to most people. For goodness sake, we have “Christians” who cheer for torture, profess a “gospel of affluence,” are warmongers and war profiteers, support policies that arrange for innocents to die so that they can feel safer and have access to petroleum, are indifferent to innocents being held captive indefinitely, strive to avoid providing health care to millions of people, etc.
September 1, 2010, 11:14 pmrobert says:
Of course he’s an atheist, or at least so agnostic that religion doesn’t matter to him personally. To me, as an atheist, this is a good thing. And I didn’t vote for him, and believe he is doing a terrible job as president.
But so what? It’s all just personal morality anyway. He’s more of a family man than Bill Clinton ever was, and I don’t think Clinton’s regular trips to the churches, accompanied by TV cameras, ever stopped him from dipping into other women, or being a highly effective president.
Not many people in this country harbor the delusion that Obama is personally religious. But it’s not going to swing any votes for him either way, unless he out-and-out says “America, I’m an atheist” it will create no controversy. He’s doing the correct amount of public piety.
September 1, 2010, 11:14 pmrpt says:
The arrogance of those who profess to be arbiters of Obama’s faith is pretty amazing.
September 1, 2010, 11:18 pmgab says:
The scary part of this whole debate is that Kopel actually had the time to read Coulter’s column. Things must really be slow since the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors…
September 1, 2010, 11:19 pmConservative Evangelical says:
Of course you see the irony here…claiming certainty in your own assessment, while denying others the same privilege.
There are 2 main forms of agnosticism: “hard” and “soft.” The former holds something like “I don’t know and no one else can know either,” while the latter more humbly holds “I don’t know, but can I be truly certain whether somebody else may have been revealed more than I?”
Reardless of whether anyone’s level of belief can reach “100%” certainty, many do indeed put it at a level comparable to, e.g., their own existence, i.e. that we’re not in the matrix, etc.
That said, it’s an interesting question what “percentage of certainty” is needed to justify saying one “believes” something?
September 1, 2010, 11:22 pmMarkV says:
The article is a bunch of poorly strung together ‘ergos’. Since Christianity is predominantly a faith of action, it is easy to tell if one is a Christian or not — by their actions. The fact that liberation theology lasted for twenty years does not mean that the Church approved the entire 20 years until the end. This post also doesn’t seem to take into account the number of practitioners in the beginning vs the number at the end. The Catholics (rightly) gave the movement a chance to die out without much fan-fair. When it being supported by bishops instead of denounced, then the Vatican noted that the movement was not Catholic.
But this is only the beginning of the odd logic. If anyone can profess to be something despite their actions, then your argument is superficially plausible. But the addition of a little common sense makes the post a waste of 1′s and 0′s. Christianity was and is a religion about how you live your life. Virgin Birth, et al. are not ‘doctrines’ of Christianity. They are beliefs subscribed to only by some christian faiths, thus not a part of the whole, but a subset. (We would not say that all dogs are poodles because poodles are dogs.) And this was true from the beginning. In Acts, Peter is confronted by Simon Magnus who is a converted Christian. But Peter quickly denounces Magnus because his actions do not match his newly professed faith.
But this is not unique to Christianity, and Coulter is justified in using this common logic. When someone professes to be a lawyer, doctor, architect, etc., it is not illegal because they have magically become by professing it to be so. It is illegal because they are still NOT a lawyer and the public needs to be protected. Since Marxist philosophies of the Super Man are in direct opposition to the Christian view of the God-centered man, one cannot be both Christian and Marxist. Since the Marxist emphasis on social and class ‘warfare’ is in direct opposition to the Christian view of ‘all created in God’s image regardless of station’, one cannot be both Christian and Marxist. So how can we tell what one truly believes from the person who espouses both?! Simple. By their actions.
Though Coulter is rude, blunt, and purposefully offensive at times, her thought process is correct. If they act like a Marxist, it doesn’t matter how many times they dress in fancy robes, build churches, or tell you they are Christian. They are not. This article is not one of your better works.
September 1, 2010, 11:35 pmArthur Kirkland says:
By that standard, not one in a thousand — or maybe one hundred thousand — Americans is a Christian.
September 1, 2010, 11:47 pmSarcastro says:
Think Coulter is dumb? Well *Alinsky* she’s secretly awesome! Her secret plan to get liberals to say she says stupid things is working great. Kopel is just collateral damage.
Besides, we shouldn’t be looking for evidence of Obama’s faith – Obama’s faith is whatever our faith about him dictates. I’ve accepted he’s a Rastafarian into my heart myself. Keeps his hair short to hide the dreadlocks, mon!
September 1, 2010, 11:52 pmrpt says:
MarkV: You do understand that Obama has not in any manner acted like a “Marxist”?
September 2, 2010, 12:00 amBlue says:
A lot of really bad theology in this thread.
First, the bounds of what it means to be a Christian have been established for nearly two millenia, since the Council of Nicea: Jesus was divine, he came to cleanse the sins of the world, he suffered death and was buried, he rose again, and he will return in judgment.
Can’t pick and choose from that list to be a Christian. There are plenty of doctrinal differences, but reject any of those biggies and you are something else.
Now, if you profess to be a Christian and don’t argue against any of the items on that list, what you believe in your heart is entirely between you and God–the real meaning of the New Testament injunction not to judge someone is not to judge their faith.
I’ve never seen any statement from Obama that suggests he has explicitly rejected any of the core elements of Christianity. As a result, I accept him as a member of the universal Church.
September 2, 2010, 12:05 ambbbeard says:
D.T. Suzuki: “To know Zen is to know that to know is not to know, and that not to know is to know.”
So: I know Obama is an atheist. Or do I? It seems to me that he is a fully indoctrinated metrosexual progressive who, in the time-honored manner of such folk, is perfectly willing to adopt a pose in order to advance his political agenda. Now, it could be that he is a Christian with a collectivist / statist bent, à la Jim Wallis, but I don’t see anything in his background that would explain this. Moreover, given the variety of colorful Marxists in his background, it seems more likely that he is exploiting the ‘opiate of the masses’ to give himself political cover.
DK: my honest impression of the Easter speech is that someone else wrote it. Do you know if a teleprompter was involved? ;-)
BBB
September 2, 2010, 12:08 amSarcastro says:
To revise and extend my previous remarks,
It does not matter how rude, deceitful or immoral conservatives are. Alinsky shows that such behavior is clever and effective. Plus Alinsky was liberal, so whatever conservatives do, it is justified as revenge!
Also I hear Obama liked him, so your argument is invalid.
Finally, re: Obama’s religion, our finely honed intuition tells us Obama is other. Maybe he isn’t a citizen, maybe he isn’t a Capitalist, maybe he isn’t Christian. They key is to stop dickering about what he is, and start ostracizing him, before he and his legions take away our rights to not be this horrible other, whatever it may be!
September 2, 2010, 12:10 ambbbeard says:
LOL, usually the PC presidential speech-writers think to add Buddhists to the list before non-believers. So you may have a point there….
September 2, 2010, 12:13 amSarcastro says:
Seems? SEEMS? Have some faith, man! If your going to assert random crap about the President’s character, ya gotta be firm. Obama IS an atheist Marxist racist Moloch-Worshiping Muslim!
September 2, 2010, 12:15 amG.R. Mead says:
I can solve this… He just needs to proclaim the Nicene Creed on national television.
Worked for Colbert. [after 1:05]
That’ll do it. Generally speaking.
September 2, 2010, 12:26 amElemenope says:
A lot of really bad theology in this thread.[...]the real meaning of the New Testament injunction not to judge someone is not to judge their faith.
A lot of really bad theology starts with the sentence: “The *real* meaning of the New Testament injunction [X] is [Y]“.
September 2, 2010, 12:30 ambbbeard says:
Well, I’m not a Christian, so perhaps I speak out of turn. But I have had occasion to contemplate the uncomfortable overlap between some Christian values and the tenets of Marxists. Reasonable people will differ on this, but I am more concerned at the “pick and choose” approach to Christianity, which treats it as a secular philosophy, than the “strict constructionist” attitude which recognizes a greater power than self or state. “Philosophical” Christians feel empowered to discard some key teachings that stand in the way of statism, like “Render unto Caesar…” and anti-statist meaning of his audience with Pilate. One of the things that allows Liberation Theology to exist is this convenient lapse of memory when it comes to state power….
Well, I’ll tell you one thing: no matter what Obama believes, it ain’t my great-great-grandfather‘s Christianity….
September 2, 2010, 12:30 amBenjamin Morris says:
I should not have said that. Her article is crap. I was basing my comment on Kopel’s description of her argument, which was generous.
September 2, 2010, 12:33 amMorat20 says:
This thread should be drug out into the woods and put out of it’s misery. It’s a fever-swamp of innuendo, mind-reading, and projection. I’m an atheist, and I’m feeling sympathy pains for Christians everywhere to see them represented like this.
Who the hell are you to throw stones at his faith? To simply state, baldly, that he lies to everyone about his faith? To stand there and judge it as insufficient, unworthy, wrong or just false?
You don’t even know him. Who here has so much as met the man? Shaken his hand? Spoken to him? And yet you judge him? Toss around scary words you don’t even understand (like “Marxist”)?
“Oh, he’s just PRETENDING to be Christian. And if he’s not, he’s a fake Christian — one of those scary black kinds. Practically a black panther, really”.
*snort*. I hate to break it to you, but people of honest Christian faith become liberals too. I know it’s shocking, but it’s true. And you know what? You find those crazy liberal Christians in the strangest places — Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, even Mormon churchs. Strange as it sounds, you don’t HAVE to be conservative, or even a Republican, and still be Christian.
From the crap in this thread, I think that’s really a stumbling block for some people.
September 2, 2010, 12:33 ambbbeard says:
You know, I would bet that we have atheists who do the same…. At least Christians are forgiven, eh?
September 2, 2010, 12:34 amepluribus says:
Not Coulter–just the Constitution (Article VI, paragraph 3):
September 2, 2010, 12:35 amTGGP says:
A liberal who doubts Obama’s religiosity.
UPDATE: On second thought, the author thinks the Obama generally projects agnosticism on a variety of issues rather than being what would religiously be categorized as an “agnostic”. Interesting article anyway. I think Obama is religiously an agnostic as well and has been explicit that he joined Trinity because it was necessary for his work as a community organizer to belong to a church.
September 2, 2010, 12:36 amRandy says:
A: “The Resurrection of Jesus destroyed death.”
Which, of course, makes no sense. People, animals and plants have been dying ever since the Resurrection in equal numbers as before.
geokstr: “.Most of us “rubes” find her to be hilarious, and love her to death for reducing leftists to screaming fits of spittle-flecked rage. You go girl.”
Whit: “exactly. she inspires the left to turn to authoritarian idiocy (not that they often need much prompting) in trying to silence her. whether it’s pies, or shoutdowns, etc. it just makes THEM look bad. that’s her greatest achievement.”
And not just liberals! Conservatives too. Just recently, Ann spoke before GOProud, the gay arm of the Republican party, and the guy in charge of Free Republic was so mad he actually disinvited her to his upcoming symposium on conservatism. Ann’s support for gays and SSM infuriates many on the right, especially the religious ones, and is making them look bad too.
You go girl!
September 2, 2010, 12:39 amRandy says:
What’s remarkable is that so far no one has questioned why it’s important to anyone to know what Obama’s religion is. I certainly don’t care — why would anyone else? Since the presidency has no say on the religious life of Americans, it’s wholly irrelevant to the office.
I care about his religion as much as I care what his favorite ice cream flavor is. Perhaps an interesting question if I were to write his biography, but of no use to me as a voter or a citizen of the US.
September 2, 2010, 12:43 ambbbeard says:
Hey, it’s the danged Internet that is making us do this. Innuendo, mind-reading, and projection are just a whole lot easier than reasoned, fact-based discourse. If you can’t stand the humidity, get out of the fever swamp….
September 2, 2010, 12:45 ambbbeard says:
Sorry, Randy, you just blew your chance to be elected President.
September 2, 2010, 12:48 amRandy says:
Blue: “I’ve never seen any statement from Obama that suggests he has explicitly rejected any of the core elements of Christianity. As a result, I accept him as a member of the universal Church.”
And can you explain why Obama, or anyone else, for that matter, would care whether you accept them as a member?
September 2, 2010, 12:49 amBlue says:
You’ve got a really tough time dealing unemotionally with religion, don’t you?
September 2, 2010, 12:54 ambbbeard says:
Okay, so does that mean we can agree to stop claiming that Muslims worship the same God as Christians?
September 2, 2010, 12:56 amgrylliade says:
Obama is exactly as religious as George W. Bush was — which is to say, however much they needed to get elected. As far as I can tell, the last deeply religious president was Carter, and before that . . . I have no idea. Bush, I think, played to his base and affected an evangelical Christianity. Obama affects a sort of liberal Christianity. Both probably at least half believe what they say, but suppress any wingnutty impulses they might have.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Most Americans think about religion about as much as politics. It doesn’t really affect their day-to-day lives. They’re decent people trying to do the right thing, and they hold at best theologically half-baked propositions. How many Christians could really explain the Trinity, much less the dual nature of Christ? They believe something that’s vaguely close to orthodox Christianity, and that’s good enough for everyday life. Politicians, at least in this day and age, need to at least pretend that they’re more religious than the average person on the street to appeal to the truly religious, but the truth is that they’re muddling along just like everyone else, more concerned with day-to-day life than with airy theological propositions.
September 2, 2010, 1:02 amrtha says:
Yeah, that’s just stupid. She can no-true-Scotsman her way out of it, I suppose, but that doesn’t make it any less idiotic. (It also doesn’t magically turn Obama into a liberal.)
Also idiotic: That anyone cares if the president is a Christian, or thinks poorly of him if he isn’t.
Idiotic and hilarious: commentators on a website who set themselves up as the Arbiters of Who Is Really Christian.
Or did the whole “judge not lest ye be judged” go in one ear and out the other?
September 2, 2010, 1:07 amDavid Schraub says:
I’m not even sure there are strong grounds to say that Cone’s Black Liberation Theology is particularly Marxist in orientation. Certainly, Latin American Liberation Theology was, to say the least, heavily influenced by Marxism. But BLT and LALT are not the same thing, and Cone always seemed to me to be far more influenced by the Black Power movement exemplified by Stokely Carmichael, which (in contrast to later iterations inspired by Huey P. Newton and aside from whatever flaws it might have had) was not Marxist at all. Which makes sense — Latin American left-radicalism tended to be highly Marxist in orientation, while Marxism amongst Black radicals in America was always pretty marginal — the primary competitor amongst Blacks to liberal integrationist models in the US was Black Nationalism, and while Cone certainly had some engagement with Marxism, his theology is, I think, considerably more Nationalist than it is Marxist.
September 2, 2010, 1:16 ambbbeard says:
Actually, there is a minor point here that you’ve gotten wrong. According to the translations provided on the Wikipedia page on the Nicene Creed, neither the original creed (from the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD), nor the revision 56 years later at the First Council of Constantinople, maintained that Christ died on the cross. They just say he suffered and was buried. The claim that he died on the cross was a later amendment to the Nicene Creed; I haven’t been able to determine when this change was made. The literal readings of the Gospels on the crucifixion of Jesus are (to my non-Christian eye) ambiguous. They use terms like “gave up his spirit” and “breathed his last”. Perhaps the writers of the Gospels were reticent about saying Christ actually died at that point, since he showed up a few days later….
September 2, 2010, 1:22 amkrs says:
I’d forgotten that Ann Coulter still had a regular column. This is sort of interesting.
I haven’t read her stuff in years, and either my memory of her columns is overly generous, or she’s losing her touch. She used to have very good turns of phrase, and used to deliver insults with just enough underlying truth that they must have stung. The column starts off funny enough, but then just falls flat with stuff like referring to Richard Wolffe (whoever he is) as “Obama’s leading butt-boy.”
The bit Prof. Kerr quotes about “all liberals are atheists” is interesting as well–I read that as an intro to a secondary point rather than “the real argument.” Point one is that Obama isn’t a Christian because what Jeremiah Wright preaches isn’t Christianity. After rambling about that for a bit, she makes her second point–which seems a bit tongue-in-cheek and a bit not really tongue-in-cheek–that she suspects that most liberals are godless socialists who pretend to be religious to get elected.
September 2, 2010, 1:42 amwhit says:
yes, but bill clinton was married to hilary. i mean, how can you blame the guy.
September 2, 2010, 2:09 amyankee says:
How do I get the mind-reading powers the other commenters here have?
That’s always been one of the least popular of Jesus’s teachings, up there with “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Volumes and volumes of Christian theology have been spent on finding rationalizations for avoiding them.
September 2, 2010, 2:10 amwhit says:
actually, many claim that christianity is NOT primarily a faith of actions, as opposed to judaism for example. of course, opinions vary as to the former but not the latter.
iow, it’s much more true of majority jewish belief that doing the right thing is really what matters vs beliefs as opposed to many christians (if not the majority) that believe that being a christian is defined by beliefs.
September 2, 2010, 2:12 amwhit says:
it’s also one of the most misunderstood.
it reminds me of people who quote the ten commandments who fixate on the “thou shall not KILL” thang, to condemn war, etc. when there is not a person in this world who understands the original texts who doesn’t understand that the proper translation is MURDER not KILL.
not that war shouldn’t be condemned (often), but it’s a falsehood that the ten commandments (and thus judaism, christianity, etc.) have as one of their ten commandments that killing is wrong.
September 2, 2010, 2:15 amTo be or not to be Christian, if you are Obama, that is the Question at Haemet says:
[...] 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 [...]
September 2, 2010, 2:20 amwhit says:
it’s wholly relevant to getting elected.
regardless of what YOU think, polling data (and an anecdotal wind-sniffing) makes it pretty clear that a professed atheist would have almost ZERO chance of being elected president, in the country we live in.
whether one thinks it’s “bigoted” or not, it’s simply reality.
i knew all along, long before many on the left claimed that this “bigoted nation” would never elect a black man (or a mixed race black/white man) that a black man, or a black woman for that matter can be elected in the US.
i have very little doubt that almost no professed atheist could.
it matters, because the first thing in presidential politics is getting elected. you cannot do ANYTHING until you are.
obama has sold out gays, for example, but if he announced tomorrow that he was no longer a christian and “sold them out”, well… just imagine the outrage.
selling out gays, lying about stopping medical mj raids, etc. is another story.
September 2, 2010, 2:22 amyankee says:
I won’t venture to say what the correct interpretation of “judge not” is, but in my experience attempts to “explain” what it “really” means tend to smell of evasion and rationalization. (The same goes for the other two as well.)
September 2, 2010, 2:32 amyankee says:
How do you know how much Clinton prays?
September 2, 2010, 2:34 amAlessandra says:
That’s because, in many churches, people aren’t lying to themselves about what constitutes sin. So if you have a disoriented attitude towards marriage, and you engage in adultery, that, by certain religious beliefs, is a sin. Saying it isn’t a sin is a lie, as per that religion’s tenets. If you have a disoriented sexuality, and, for example, you engage in homosexual behavior, or you have sex with kids, or engage in S&M, or engage in prostitution, by certain religious tenets, those are also sins. Saying it isn’t a sin is a lie in the context of what these religions hold.
“That doesn’t validate their beliefs.”
Neither do your remarks validate your ignorant views on human sexuality.
September 2, 2010, 2:37 amAlessandra says:
Her quotation was blasted on the news a couple (few?) of years ago… google it, you might find the exact reference…
September 2, 2010, 2:39 amdr says:
For that matter, how do we know that Alessandra prays at all? I assume she’s a muslim, and therefore an atheist.
September 2, 2010, 2:47 amEH says:
regardless of what YOU think, polling data (and an anecdotal wind-sniffing) makes it pretty clear that a professed atheist would have almost ZERO chance of being elected president, in the country we live in.
I don’t know what particular flavor of bias this is, but I’m gonna guess “Confirmation.” It’s a nice little tautology, isn’t it? It’s important not for a reason, but because people care about it. Because it has symbolic value? Can it be traded, or is it more like a positive stereotype? Seems maybe like it’s more like a component of “political capital,” the phrase The Beltway uses when they don’t want to admit they pay attention to the polls.
September 2, 2010, 2:48 amwhit says:
they can tend to smell like whatever you think they do, but it doesn’t change the fact that the judge not thang, just like the thou shall not kill thang are severely misunderstood.
and there are of course the other verses such as:
which if you actually read them, make it more clear that what was being said was the judge the act, not the actor to some extent
they also make clear that one must be damn sure, so to speak and can be viewed as a warning iow you better be damn sure about judging another person because the same thing could happen to you.
that’s a pretty fair interpretation of the whole LEST *you* be judged.
the whole: in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
thang
of course whether or not jesus actually said any of this stuff is of course suspect, as is whether or not he even existed, but i digress…
John 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Jer. 22:3 Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness…
Phil. 1:10 so that you may be able to discern [judge] what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ…
Phil. 1:7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you [judge you]…
Jer. 22:3 Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness…
September 2, 2010, 2:58 amwhit says:
well yes. you can engage in philobabble all you want, but the reality is it’s important for presidential politics because it’s a near certain requirement if you want to get elected, which any REAL candidate does.
somebody like dennis kucinich who doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell can say whatever he wants, but a candidate who WANTS TO GET ELECTED understands that he won’t be elected if he admits to being an atheist, so IF he is an atheist, he aint going to admit it. nor would i fault them for that lie.
i’m not saying i know whether or not obama is an actual believer, but i have no more reason to doubt him than i do GWB or Clinton etc.
otoh, i have near complete confidence that jimmy carter is a believer.
September 2, 2010, 3:02 amAlessandra says:
Obviously Coulter plays opposition politics. And if there’s anything that cannot be said of her is that she is dumb.
Politics aside, intersecting her statement is a much more complicated question. It’s the difference between the life one lives and the beliefs one has.
If all your beliefs and attitudes go counter to the tenets of Christianity, with one exception, your belief in a Christian God, can you think of yourself as a Christian and label yourself a Christian?
I think the distinction is important concerning how much a person lives out their religious beliefs, compared to the specific belief in a certain god.
Depending what one categorizes as “liberal” positions and tenets on a variety of issues concerning relationships, sexuality, family, etc, these are counter to Christian tenets. This is not what Coulter was saying, but if one has these liberal positions and behaviors and still claims a belief in a Christian God, it contradicts the larger set of teachings and tenets of Christianity.
Of course, if you define Christianity as “anything goes” hitched onto a belief of a certain God, than there is not contradiction.
September 2, 2010, 3:19 amDilan Esper says:
First, the bounds of what it means to be a Christian have been established for nearly two millenia, since the Council of Nicea: Jesus was divine, he came to cleanse the sins of the world, he suffered death and was buried, he rose again, and he will return in judgment.
There are, by the way, numerous denominations of Christianity that do not accept the Nicene Creed or believe it to be irrelevant; it should also be noted that just about EVERY Protestant denomination (except perhaps Anglicanism / Episcopaleanism) rejects the claim that the Council of Nicea, a Catholic Church assembly, had any authority to determine what constitutes a Christian, even if they accept the tenets of the Creed.
Look, it happens that Jesus– as far as we are aware– never said “this is the definition of a Christian”. Nor did anyone else in the New Testament. (For instance, had Peter or Paul defined it, I suspect such a definition would carry substantial weight.) So what you are left with is that anyone can choose any particular definition they wish to. Mormons, for instance, would probably claim that the key belief is that Jesus was divine and the savior of humankind, and that because they believe that, they are Christians.
But to just say “well, the Catholic Church convened a convention and decided who gets to be called a Christian” begs the question, especially considering that many, many Christian denominations reject the very concept of a Catholic (i.e., universal) Church that gets to decide such things.
September 2, 2010, 3:25 amAlessandra says:
Why not? A Christian Jewish Muslim, or maybe an atheist who prays a lot.
Whatever works ;-)
September 2, 2010, 3:31 amDilan Esper says:
On the merits of this issue, the problem is that a lot of people are insincere about their religious beliefs. Pascal’s Wager, for instance, is ridiculously common, and I would argue that anyone who professes religious belief on the basis that it can only increase their chances of seeing an afterlife and never decrease them is not really religious. There are also lots of people who believe in such a hollowed out form of religion, or mix and match spiritual beliefs, that it’s ridiculous to call them adherents of any specific faith. And plenty of people have long since lost their faith but continue to profess it either because they don’t want to admit that to themselves or they don’t want to face social sanction.
Further, politicians are especially prone to lie about their religious belief, given the polls that show huge numbers of people won’t vote for nonbelievers. Only one member of Congress– Pete Stark– admits he is an a nonbeliever. You really think he is the only one, especially when you consider that politicians are generally drawn from the educated elite and the educated elite are least likely to believe?
So it’s entirely possible that Obama is a nonbeliever. Guess what though– it’s also entirely possible Newt Gingrich is one too. But since only God can know what’s in a person’s heart (which is something I would also tell the Pascal’s Wagerers out there), we are stuck taking people’s word for it on this subject.
And that’s actually fine, because in reality, what really needs to happen is that the American people need to grow up about voting for nonbelievers. So long as Americans continue to be prejudiced against atheists and agnostics, politicians are going to lie to them about their faiths.
September 2, 2010, 3:31 amwhit says:
i’ve heard two basic schools:
1) you’re a christian if you believe jesus was the son of god. that’s pretty much THE essential thing. iow, it is based on belief/faith. works are good, but the definitional requirement is that belief
2) a christian is defined by their works/acts. those are inspired by the whole jesus thang, but what is important is how you live, not those beliefs.
(2) sometimes makes 1 a necessary requirement, but not always. although, if you don’t go with the whole son o god thang, then i’m not exactly sure why you are a christian, and not just a believer (assuming you are) that thinks jesus is cool and that you do good stuff.
September 2, 2010, 3:33 amwhit says:
“So it’s entirely possible that Obama is a nonbeliever. Guess what though– it’s also entirely possible Newt Gingrich is one too. But since only God can know what’s in a person’s heart (which is something I would also tell the Pascal’s Wagerers out there), we are stuck taking people’s word for it on this subject.”
bingo. i totally agree. and like i said, i think it’s nigh impossible to be elected president as a professed atheist, and fwiw it’s not like an atheist is betraying their god by claiming to be a believer :)
i do believe jimmy carter is definitely a believer. i just don’t think he’s a good enough liar to pull it off and he is just way too sincere and consistent about it.
as for any other president, i have no idea if they are TRULY a believer, and frankly, i’m not really concerned either way
September 2, 2010, 3:36 amPubliusFL says:
I don’t think anyone has suggested that Obama is or should be legally barred from the presidency on the basis of his religious beliefs.
September 2, 2010, 6:30 amStephen Lathrop says:
In some Christian religious traditions you don’t need to be sure, and you don’t need to make the kind of distinction that statement contains. Remarkably, Unitarians are the direct intellectual and spiritual descendents of the New England Puritans. Presumably, few commenting here would deny Christian status to the Puritans, but many would doubt that of Unitarians. That’s a confusion, not an insight.
September 2, 2010, 7:03 amepluribus says:
I said:
PubliusFL says:
What is Ann Coulter doing but “testing” his religion? Why would any rational person care about his religious beliefs but for the fact that he is a public office holder and may (probably will) again be a candidate? And as a BTW, I find the No Religious Test Clause peculiarly incompatible with the claim of many so-called conservatives that this is a Christian nation. If that is true, then why does the Constitution bar us from “testing” whether our public officer holders qualify as true Christians?
September 2, 2010, 7:15 ammattski says:
You’re claiming some sort of authority to explain Christian (or traditional) moral principles to us?
That’s interesting in light of your endorsement of geokstr’s view that aggressive, provocative and insulting behavior is a virtue.
Are you selling CD’s of your spiritual wisdom on the internets?
September 2, 2010, 7:17 ampublic_defender says:
It’s sad that enough people believe the baloney Ann Coulter spews that a rebuttal is necessary. My guess is that Coulter doesn’t even believe what she says and writes. Like Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck and others, Coulter writes not to spread ideas, but to separate her readers/viewers from their money. Suckers!
September 2, 2010, 7:18 amAlessandra says:
I disagree with a lot of the above. Coulter can be quite on the money when she skewers the left, like the delightful recent incident up in Canada. I don’t get an impression of major hypocrisy from her, but then, who knows. Clearly, she has been very savvy with her auto-promotion and marketing tactics. So I think she is very happy spreading ideas and getting money from it simultaneously.
September 2, 2010, 7:43 amjeff says:
It shows they are willing to lie to get their way. Unless you have a long standing personal relationship with said candidate, how do you believe anything they say. The problem is we only get to choose between liars.
September 2, 2010, 7:50 amAlessandra says:
Almost correct. The problem is they all say the same thing, but we don’t know who is lying and who isn’t.
I’d like to see this truth standard be applied to issues like adultery, pornography, prostitution, and heterosexuality.
When hell freezes…
September 2, 2010, 8:01 amrosignol says:
More than a little.
She seems to have figured out how to make a living by winding up lefties, and appears to genuinely enjoy her work.
September 2, 2010, 8:02 amJoseph Slater says:
Typical thread involving a Coulter claim (this can also be applied to Limbaugh):
A: Ooh, she has an interesting and stinging point here!
B: No she doesn’t. Her facts are unsupported to inaccurate, and her logic is obviously and deeply flawed. Here’s why. . . . Also, she has a history of this. Why are you continuing to take her seriously? She’s a carny playing to marks.
A: Ooh, look at how she tweaks you liberals! Her point is to get you mad! And she’s so good at that!
September 2, 2010, 8:03 amDr. K says:
“Christian” or “Muslim” is not the issue.
One cannot deny his true religion is “Redistributionism”.
September 2, 2010, 8:13 amWallace says:
Professor Kopel, you are mistaken. One is not a Christian merely because they claim the label. Christ himself made this quite clear:
“By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers”
It’s simply not enough to claim the label, “Christian.” I am sorry if that offends the post-modern sensibilities of the tolerance crowd, but that is just the way it is.
September 2, 2010, 8:15 amPubliusFL says:
She’s obviously doing something very different from “testing” his religion, in a constitutional sense. It’s perfectly clear what a “religious test” was at the time of the Founding. England and the colonies had a long history of Test Acts creating a legal requirement that officeholders be members of a certain church or make a declaration that they accept or reject certain religious doctrines (e.g. denying transubstantiation, to keep Catholics out of office).
September 2, 2010, 8:16 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Absent mind reading, there’s no way to determine Obama’s beliefs. We can only infer them from his actions, which don’t strike me as having any particular religious flavor. But presidential professions of religion are as suspect as Bill Clinton’s Big White Bible.
Not much can be made of his long attendance at Reverend Wright’s church, either: it may be that he Believed, but it may also be that it was good politics in the Black community, or that his wife dragged him to church every Sunday. (Not the first husband that’s happened to!)
At any rate, his beliefs don’t matter much because the man is corrupt (his wife’s hospital job was an obvious payoff), and he will always sell his office to the highest bidder – from the UAW to government workers to Wall Street – if he can get away with it.
September 2, 2010, 8:17 amJustin says:
Another Kopel. Write a defense of Obama on some subject in which the anti-Obama position borders on insanity, and add some hackish insanity (Obama is a *racist, Marxist* Christian!)
At least you parsed your words carefully to make the accusation implied.
September 2, 2010, 8:27 amJohnBoy says:
The thoughts of CS Lewis are appropriate here, in my opinion.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Mere Christianity
Ergo, if you call yourself a “Christian,” then you have to believe two things: 1) that Jesus Christ was the son of God, and 2) that He was sent to conquer sin and death. The later chapters of Revelation call for the judgment of all souls, the movement of the unbelieving dead from Hades into the Lake of Fire after judgment, the new heaven and the new earth, the resurrection of the dead into new bodies, etc.
So – good catch on quoting from Obama’s biography. If you don’t tell your kids about heaven and the after-life, then you are likely not a Christian.
Further, if you simply believe that Jesus was a nice man and a great moral teacher but you don’t believe in his divinity and you don’t believe in life after death, then you are NOT a Christian, despite the views of John Sponge and other heretics.
This is the rub. Believing in the supernatural aspects of Christianity won’t make you popular with the Hyde Park crowd. I doubt that William Ayers has seen the inside of too many churches!
Obama being a politician is simply trying to have it both ways: 1) con the gullible into believing that – despite all evidence to the contrary – he really is a super-secret Christian; and 2) winking to the cognescenti that – of course – he doesn’t believe what those rubes believe ’cause he went to Harvard and all.
It IS fun to watch his advisors work hard at convincing the public that Obama is religious. The daily verses on the Blackberry!
Finally, it is fun to go to the website of Trinity, Obama’s former church. While their message does have its positive points, the church apparently believes in black racism.
September 2, 2010, 8:33 amJustin says:
“One cannot deny his true religion is “Redistributionism”.”
So is mine. From Deuteronomy 14:21:
You shall tithe all the yield of your seed that comes from the field year by year. 23 And before the Lord your God, in the place that he will choose, to make his name dwell there, byou shall eat the tithe of your grain, of your wine, and of your oil, cand the firstborn of your herd and flock, dthat you may learn to fear the Lord your God always. 24 And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the Lord your God blesses you, because ethe place is too far from you, which the Lord your God chooses, to set his name there, 25 then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the Lord your God chooses 26 and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And byou shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household. 27 And you shall not neglect fthe Levite who is within your towns, for ghe has no portion or inheritance with you.
28 h“At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. 29 And the Levite, because ghe has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that ithe Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do.
For what it’s worth (even ignoring exemptions) because how tax money is spent, no American “tithes” – that is, gives 10% of their income (much less wealth) to the poor – through taxes alone. Not even those paying at the highest tax brackets. Hence, my God* is more communist than Obama.
(I say “my God” because I understand some Christians reject Deuteronomy, and others reject all the parts except for the part that commands them to be homophobes. And yes, I understand that parts of Deuteronomy morality are now “dated” – including, from my view, the rejection of homosexuality.)
September 2, 2010, 8:38 amJustin says:
I love how the same people who claim to think that Christianity is designed to exclude anyone they disagree with also thinks that the US is a Christian nation. How? There are so few Christians!
September 2, 2010, 8:39 amNeo says:
During the 2008 campaign, I read an old interview with Obama which included some comments on religion. The killer quote for me was when he referred to Jesus Christ as “an historic figure” with none of the usual Christian “Lord and Savior” stuff.
September 2, 2010, 8:41 amMy take away, Obama is an agnostic.
Jon Rowe says:
I think this is certainly a defensible argument. However, it’s not “indisputable” among orthodox Christians that Jews and Christians worship the same God. I can rattle off the names of a few learned orthodox Christian figures who argue Jews and Christians do NOT worship the same God because Christians worship a Triune God and Jews don’t.
September 2, 2010, 8:47 amJon Rowe says:
I agree that those Protestants believe Church assembly have the authority to determine what constitutes an assembly. However, most evangelicals/reformed Protestants I speak to refuse to term the Church that formulated the Nicene Creed “Catholic” as in “Roman Catholic.” They see it as the “early church” in which they feel 100% communion not the “Roman Catholic Church” which Luther broke away from and that is today lead by the Pope.
September 2, 2010, 8:55 amArthur Kirkland says:
The religious right seems to bank on it, so why not?
September 2, 2010, 9:03 amPaul A'Barge says:
Kamal:
Oh, I don’t know … maybe because
(1) the man is fundamentally dishonest
(2) if the shoe fits
(3) …
hope that and a ball-peen hammer help
September 2, 2010, 9:07 amMark Eidel says:
If it doesn’t walk like a duck or quack like a duck, why say it’s a duck?
That is, unless of course, you have something against ducks and its identification as a duck would make ducks look bad.
September 2, 2010, 9:07 amJohn White says:
Now, I’m not saying that President Obama is the devil or the Antichrist or anything like that. He’s NOT. But remember, even Satan himself recognizes Jesus Christ as Lord. So to say that Barack Obama is a Christian because he acknowledges the Godship of Jesus is like saying that since Canada’s Prime Minister recognizes Obama’s presidency, that makes him (Canada’s PM) an American. Calling yourself a Christian doesn’t make you a Christian. The old adage is “going to church makes you a Christian like standing in a garage makes you a car.” Christianity an Marxism are mutually exclusive. One is based in personal freedom, and a reliance on Jesus as God. The other is based on servitude to the State, and that same State as God. Jesus said we’d know His children by their fruits, and President Obama bears none of the fruits of the Spirit. No, President Obama is NOT a Muslim. But he and his pastor are certainly not Christians, either.
September 2, 2010, 9:07 amJon Rowe says:
Gah. You can tell the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. That line should have read: “I agree that those Protestants believe Church assembly does NOT have the authority to determine what constitutes a “Christian.”
September 2, 2010, 9:11 amJon Rowe says:
Christianity may be based on the notion that Jesus is God, but it is NOT based on “personal freedom.” Every single time the Bible speaks of “liberty” it speaks of spiritual liberty — the kind of liberty that is 100% compatible with being a chattel slave.
September 2, 2010, 9:13 amgeokstr says:
Given that we have about 50 years of leftwing sliming to counteract, payback is a bitch, ain’t it?
And based on your own comments on this site, you shouldn’t be complaining about anything “aggressive, provocative and insulting”.
September 2, 2010, 9:14 amArthur Kirkland says:
Jesus wants to legalize weed? He dislikes gay-bashers? He’s pro-choice? He smirks at the rubes who bombard the FCC with letters when a television character wears a skirt above the knee?
Or are you referring to the God-blessed freedom to engage in warmongering, grab a $40 million salary from shareholders, live in a gated community, profit from mercenaries, dump spouses while preaching about piety, carry big bags of illicit boner pills to a weekend trip to the Caribbean with the boys, torture shackled prisoners, imprison innocents indefinitely, and the like?
September 2, 2010, 9:17 amMick says:
It’s called Taqiyya, Lying in the advance of Islam. Duh.
September 2, 2010, 9:19 amrtha says:
So much for turning the other cheek!
September 2, 2010, 9:22 amArthur Kirkland says:
Theological inquiry: Could a person who means well but nonetheless supports universal health care still be a Christian? How about someone who claims to be a believer but persists in faulting the decision to invade Iraq — could that person be a Christian?
Or must one sign up for the entire Republican platform to be considered a believer?
Thank you.
September 2, 2010, 9:23 amNobody Really says:
Those who don’t like the obvious conclusion of video evidence just claim that it is edited without any evidence of what the full video or context would change, other than they prefer that conclusion.
September 2, 2010, 9:23 amuh_clem says:
A very successful troll, Prof Kopel. My hat is off to you.
September 2, 2010, 9:24 amgeokstr says:
Works just as well that way.
September 2, 2010, 9:25 amgeokstr says:
Sorry, but after all these decades of taking sh*t from the left, both cheeks are all slapped out, and it’s time to slap back.
September 2, 2010, 9:31 amMasturbatin' Pete says:
I won’t venture to say what the correct interpretation of “judge not” is, but in my experience attempts to “explain” what it “really” means tend to smell of evasion and rationalization. (The same goes for the other two as well.)“Judge not” is a favorite because most people assume it means that no one is ever allowed to criticize anyone else’s behavior. The Lisa Simpson interpretation is incorrect. “Judging” is an evaluation of the moral responsibility of the actor for his acts. It is not an evaluation of the objective good or evil of the act. For example, I can say with absolute certainty that taking the Lord’s name in vain is evil, and that elective abortion is evil. But I don’t have any way of knowing the moral responsibility someone who engages in those acts bears. Someone who curses God could have Tourette’s. Someone who has an abortion could be relentlessly pressured by her abusive boyfriend, and certainly is taught by at close to half of society that there’s nothing morally wrong with abortion. I simply have no way to tell how responsible anyone is for their evil acts, or whether and how they should be punished. “Above my pay grade,” as the President would say.
September 2, 2010, 9:33 amjoe canouse says:
really….pastors in slave states….cheap and lazy and i read your blog via instapundit alot…..coulter’s entire article makes a valid point as well as beck….because you call it christianity doesnt make it so……i dont recognize the America obama has come to believe exists as well as his brand of religion which is more atheist than anything i recogize….
September 2, 2010, 9:33 amgeokstr says:
Ps…
Besides, as an atheist, I don’t have to ascribe to all those pithy sayings from god.
September 2, 2010, 9:37 amJim O'Sullivan says:
Oh, for Crissakes. she’s kidding. You just did what she expects liberals to do: miss the joke. Jeez.
September 2, 2010, 9:44 amrtha says:
Well, there is that! Kind of a relief, isn’t it?
In any case, if Obama isn’t a Jesus-was-the-Son-of-God Christian, it’s not like he’s in terrible company – neither was Jefferson.
September 2, 2010, 9:48 amLee Reynolds says:
A belief in Marxism should, in any sane society, preclude one from being elected to public office.
The question of whether he is a Christian or Muslim is irrelevant when the issue of Marxism is put on the table.
Marxism in all its varieties and and flavours is evil. Those who adhere to those ideologies work to bring evil into the world.
If Obama is a Marxist then he has been violating his oath of office since day one and should be impeached for it.
September 2, 2010, 9:56 amCarl The EconGuy says:
Ann Coulter is missing the point. The point is not whether Obama is or is not a Christian, the key to understanding him is this: he always walks a fine line. He knows he needs to appear Christian, because that’s what most Americans want and expect, but he can’t afford to be seen as too Christian, because his anti-Christian left would despise him for that. So he leaves us in doubt, deliberately and skillfully so. As with everything he says and does, we’ll never know what’s inside that shifty coat of many colors he wears in public. His only true mastery is his ability to hide himself, and to make it obvious to opposing sides of any question that he agrees with all of them. He once referred to this as “I have a gift”, meaning that he could avoid taking a stance while making everyone believe he just did — no matter which side of the issue they were on. If he weren’t such a small man, he’d be frightening.
September 2, 2010, 9:57 amgary gulrud says:
Dave, you haven’t a clue. Wright is a Black Muslim in the pulpit of a UCC church. The UCC has no governing oversight into the theology of its member congregations. Syncretisms of many sorts can be found preached from the pulpits serving the 1.5 million belonging to UCC churches.
The Christian kerygma was established by 435 AD and your provincial American scruples are irrelevant. Your appellation democratically bestowed is as permanent and abiding as the breath with which it was uttered.
September 2, 2010, 9:59 amCornellian says:
Ann Coulter’s column today argues that Obama is not a Muslim; rather, he “is obviously an atheist.”
Ho hum, another hack trying to sell books.
September 2, 2010, 10:02 amBuzz says:
Stephen
The assertion is easily proven. Don’t go by just the few snippets of Wright that made it on to Youtube. Look at the guest preacher Father Michael Pfleger whom Wright called on to fill in for him regularly (and who was cited as an inspiration by Obama, by the way). Look at Pfleger’s his out-and-out racist rant against Hillary Clinton and, most important, the reaction of the church members at the racist jabs.
Second, Wright was a disciple of James Cone, a radical black liberationist. That fact was plain on the Trinity church’s web site until Wright became radioactive, and suddenly it disappeared. Among Cone’s many racist preachings was that black people should liberate themselves from white people “by any means necessary.”
Way, way more at the link.
September 2, 2010, 10:03 amBob Detweiler says:
Anyone who is familiar with the Gospel message and who reads the statement of faith at Trinity’s website would know immediately that Trinity is not a Christian church. A person is certainly not a Christian simply because he declares it so. If you have not trusted the Christian Gospel (impossible if you don’t even know what it is) then you are not a Christian. Christianity is defined, in large measure, by its traditional beliefs. Liberation theology is heresy. It has the audacity to introduce money and skin color and other irrelevant matters into a message of reconciling all men back to God. Adherents of liberation theology are necessary not Christians. Wright believes this crap, therefore he is not a Christian. Obama sucked up to this man as his spiritual mentor for 20 years and, we must conclude, also believes this crap. Obama is not a Christian. I don’t think Omama knows his head from his feet. Those who say “man, you can’t go around saying who is a Christian and who isn’t”, simply do not understand what Christianity is.
September 2, 2010, 10:04 amAnderson says:
Someone who does not believe in life after death can no more be a Christian (though he can be called one)
What a dumbass.
One has *faith* in life after death. People are weak in faith. The apostles were weak in faith.
Faith as small as mustard seed allows one to cast mountains into the sea. Try it sometime, and find out how much faith you have.
Most Christians, if they’re sincere, share the prayer of the centurion: Lord, I believe — help thou my unbelief!
Insincere Christians, by contrast, brag about how much faith they have, and how anyone who lacks faith is not a Christian.
… As for the post, (1) kudos to Kopel, and (2) WHO in their right minds would let ANN COULTER be the gatekeeper to who’s a Christian?
September 2, 2010, 10:06 amWilly says:
I am an environmentalist. See me in this t-shirt that says “save the planet”?
I also drive an SUV that gets 9 miles/gallon. I water my lawn daily, and buy as many plastic containers as I can. I keep my thermostat at 80 degrees in winter using my coal-fired furnace, and keep my house at 60 degrees in the summer with my older-model leaky air conditioner.
I am an environmentalist. Because I said so. See my t-shirt?
September 2, 2010, 10:08 amBuzz says:
Arthur
Sure. I don’t support the first and I was against the Iraq war and I’m a conservative evangelical. But my thinking is based on legal and practical reasons (way too discursive and off-topic to go into here), not theological.
September 2, 2010, 10:08 amBama 1L says:
So do most of the Jesuits I have met, and yet . . . .
September 2, 2010, 10:10 amAnderson says:
Liberation theology is heresy. It has the audacity to introduce money and skin color and other irrelevant matters into a message of reconciling all men back to God.
Jesus was a heretic? Guess that’s why they crucified him.
News flash: Protestantism is a heresy, if you ask a Catholic. Roman Catholicism is a heresy, if you ask an Orthodox Christian. And yet, people who aren’t assholes usually manage to concede that all of these people are “Christian.”
The people talking loudest about who’s not a Christian on this thread, are the people who seem the least likely to *be* Christians. Especially considering the damage they do to Christianity by making it seem to be a religion of hate and exclusion. Sockpuppeting for Satan?
September 2, 2010, 10:12 amScott says:
Just a small injection of fact: there are actually a number of well-regarded theological schools located in Hyde Park. Having attended the University of Chicago, I used to walk past them fairly frequently. You might, therefore, want to clarify exactly which “Hyde Park” crowd you’re discussing.
September 2, 2010, 10:12 amAnderson says:
N.b. that not even the Roman Catholics have declared liberation theology to be heretical in all its aspects; rather, LIKE EVERY OTHER THEOLOGY, it has its good and bad points.
In March 1983, Cardinal Ratzinger made ten observations of Gutiérrez’s theology, accusing Gutiérrez of politically interpreting the Bible in supporting temporal messianism, and stating that the predominance of orthopraxis over orthodoxy in his thought proves a Marxist influence. Ratzinger also stated that Gutierrez’s conceptions necessarily uphold class conflict in the Roman Catholic Church, which, logically, leads to rejecting hierarchy. However, Cardinal Ratzinger did praise liberation theology in some respects, including its ideal of justice, its rejection of violence, and its stress on “the responsibility which Christians necessarily bear for the poor and oppressed.”
To the extent that liberation theology devotes itself to realizing the kingdom of God in material terms — never its stated goal, but an easy thing to slide into — then it’s mistaken, but that does not make its devotees “not Christian.”
The Christian has a duty to alleviate suffering in this world, and that does not always have to mean putting on band-aids; unjust social arrangements can and should be challenged.
September 2, 2010, 10:17 amBuzz says:
Well, no true Scotsman would …
September 2, 2010, 10:18 amDB says:
Dallas Willard offers the following list of “gospels” espoused within the broader Christian community:
1 – Gospel of social justice — Jesus taught about it, we’re to pursue it.
2 – Gospel of atonement — agree that Jesus’ death erased sin and get a ticket to heaven
3 – Gospel of the Church — do right by the Church and it’ll do right by you in the end
4 – Gospel of Discipleship — learn from Jesus every day and increasingly take his Grace into every element of our lives.
Willard espouses #4, saying that transformation of the heart through intentional discipleship will provide #1, encompasses #2, and leads to a better church community for #3.
Modern evangelicalism clings to #2, thinking being “Christian” is a binary event, either one is or is not based on being “born again,” and only God knows for sure. I think there’s a trend underway that realizes a “I believe” moment and nothing else isn’t working well.
#3 is the Catholic Church, as well as the Mormon Church.
My sense is Obama falls into #1, with a lot of doubts about the reality of Jesus, God, and the role of that reality in our everyday lives. Not uncommon. His mind is a stew of views about “social justice” tempered by Marxism, radicalism, some Islam, and a whole lot of selfish ego.
I do not believe he’s a cloaked Muslim. Then again, I do not believe he is a “Christian” either, if one goes by Willard’s #4 … I doubt very much Obama truly believes in the reality of God’s present Kingdom, nor do I believe Obama truly wishes to learn from Christ and change his heart. But I’ll confess I’m not sure I do either.
September 2, 2010, 10:22 amJon Rowe says:
Or Washington, J. Adams, Franklin, Madison, G. Morris, and others. Though, to make the claim more specific, they didn’t (with some “likely didn’t”) believe Jesus was God the Son, 2nd Person in the Trinity.
Some of them may have believed Jesus the Son of God in a created, subordinate sense. The Arian and Socinian heresies were popular among the elite Enlightened “key Founder” types.
September 2, 2010, 10:22 amAlessandra says:
Does seeing millions of very different people as one stupid stereotype make you feel intelligent?
September 2, 2010, 10:25 amJon Rowe says:
Here is an interesting quote of John Adams’ expressing his heresy, denying the Incarnation:
“An incarnate God!!! An eternal, self-existent, omnipresent omniscient Author of this stupendous Universe, suffering on a Cross!!! My Soul starts with horror, at the Idea, and it has stupified the Christian World. It has been the Source of almost all of the Corruptions of Christianity.”
John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816.
Here Adams’ jokes about the Council of Nicea:
“The Trinity was carried in a general council by one vote against a quaternity; the Virgin Mary lost an equality with the Father, Son, and Spirit only by a single suffrage.”
John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812.
September 2, 2010, 10:27 amJon Rowe says:
It is kind of ironic. There is more evidence from the horses mouth that Obama is a “Christian” than there is for George Washington.
I’ve studied it in meticulous detail. There are 20,000 pages of GW’s officially recorded words, and hundreds/thousands of references to “Providence” and other more inclusive God words. References to Jesus Christ? Just one in a public address written by an aide. References to Jesus Christ in GW’s private correspondence? 0.
September 2, 2010, 10:30 amxx says:
No, I would suspect that well over half of self-identified Christians would express some amount of uncertainty as to what will happen to them after they die.
September 2, 2010, 10:32 amAnderson says:
It is kind of ironic. There is more evidence from the horses mouth that Obama is a “Christian” than there is for George Washington.
Perhaps we can anticipate Coulter’s next column, where she explains that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and even Lincoln were not Christians (and were thus liberals? is that how it works?). Which is probably why 9/11 happened.
The example of Washington alone should suffice to demonstrate that a good president need not be a devout Christian.
… Speculating, I’d say that Obama is a smart man, and that smart people often carry burdens of doubt that the less intelligent do not. The Bible does not say that intelligence is a virtue. One needn’t carry this to Pascalian levels (the “sacrifice of the intellect” that appalled Nietzsche), but it’s something to remember, and something for smart people to feel humble about.
I believe Paul says somewhere that not all Christians feel the assurance of salvation.
September 2, 2010, 10:36 amAultimer says:
This seems to apply to a good portion of the founders – all that wishy-washy reference to “providence” and accomodation of self-proclaimed sinners. Jefferson is the most obvious, but Adams, Washington, Madison, Hamilton and even Franklin fail the “someone who would find [religion and "God"] silly” test.
September 2, 2010, 10:37 amB.D. says:
Frankly, calling Obama an atheist is putting a positive spin on his membership in Wright’s church. That’s exactly what I want to believe about him: that he saw the attendance at the church as an essential precondition to launching his political career in Chicago.
I think it’d be creepy if he was actually “brought to Jesus” by Wright and his black liberation theology.
September 2, 2010, 10:38 amCJColucci says:
I can only assume that the point of this post was to dredge up the comment string for sane people to gag at. Nicely done.
September 2, 2010, 10:40 amMartin McPhillips says:
“Black liberation theology” or just “black theology” is a variant on Latin American “liberation theology.” “Black theology” is an amalgam of plain vanilla Marxist “liberation theology” and the black power movement of the 1960s, and it is not just racist, in the sense that it attacks whites as devils (which it does), but also racial supremacist in the sense that blacks are portrayed as the chosen people through whom whites must seek God, who is of course black.
This is all in the books of James Cone who, according to Wright himself, is indispensable for understanding Wright’s (Obama’s) church. It is not a difficult thing to discover or understand, and requires about one trip to a good library.
So, this church and its “theology” are roughly equivalent to the white racist “Christian Identity” movement. I can’t imagine that anyone would stay somewhere like that for twenty years and not know where he was and without wanting it. Had it been properly acknowledged and explained by our wonderful media, Obama would have been hooted off the national stage before he could have gotten his second foot on it.
The videos of Wright screaming out all those unpleasant things are beside the point. They are not taken out of context; they are perfectly in context. The underlying “theology” of the church is worse than what you see in the videos, and not ameliorative in any way.
As to the question of whether it is authentic Christianity or not, my answer is no. Others might disagree with that conclusion, but I see it as inevitable.
September 2, 2010, 10:42 amruralcounsel says:
Just goes to show how malleable Christianity can be. It can be molded to fit almost any political ideology, from Marxism to Tea Party.
Seems like a lot of fuss about what label to put on Mr. Obama. I would argue that it really doesn’t matter what you call him. He’s judged by his actions and the causes he supports, both by his advocates and detractors.
Fortunately, as a 80% athiest/20% agnostic, I’m free to judge him however I’d like. He isn’t doing very well by my standards.
September 2, 2010, 10:44 amAnderson says:
… If liberation theology is heresy for conflating politics with Christianity …
… then what is “all liberals are atheists”?
Anyone condemning liberation theology without condemning Ann Coulter is a hypocrite.
September 2, 2010, 10:45 amcocksure about me not thee says:
Funny how they are never smart enough to doubt their own intelligence.
September 2, 2010, 10:48 amA. Criminal says:
“I wondered whether I should have told her the truth…”
Obama accidentally defined himself.
Primitive superstitions are alive and well.
September 2, 2010, 10:56 amcocksure about me not thee says:
Obama’s no Christian, he’s a Leo.
But, since I who don’t care for him or his politics am an air sign and should be, as such, sympatico compatible with his fire, he must be faking his zodiac sincerity, too.
September 2, 2010, 11:00 amRandy says:
Blue: “You’ve got a really tough time dealing unemotionally with religion, don’t you?”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. You said that you accept Obama as a Christian, and I merely asked why that would be of concern to him. Whatever ones’ religion, it isn’t dependent upon whether someone else believes you are heartfelt in your belief. Indeed, what I am always told by religious leaders that what matters in your heart, and whether you actually have your own relationship with God.
So instead of answering my question, you just evade it.
Anderson: “(2) WHO in their right minds would let
ANN COULTERanyone be the gatekeeper to who’s a Christian?”Of course. And why would I or anyone else care if someone is or isn’t convinced whether I am a Christian?
Whit: You are correct, although religion isn’t relevant to the office of the president, the reality is that it is relevant to a lot of voters come election time. I wish it weren’t the case, but those are the facts. However, once elected, it’s of little concern to anyone else. Unless, of course, he is eyeing another election.
September 2, 2010, 11:05 amByomtov says:
Conservative Evangelical,
I did not claim certainty. In fact I expressly denied it. The clue, since you missed it, is where I said, “Neither do you or I or the Pope.” How does disclaiming knowledge turn into claiming certainty?
The only privilege I deny others is to describe their faith-based beliefs as certain knowledge. I insist that if you claim to know something you provide some basis for it other than books written 2000 or so years ago. I don’t deny anyone the right to believe what is in those books. But there is a difference between that and knowledge.
Further, given that even many individuals who are Christians – who base their beliefs on those same books – come to differing conclusions about their meaning, I’d say that there are ample grounds for saying you don’t know.
September 2, 2010, 11:08 amslow says:
Not all christians believe that. There have been wars fought, heretics burned over this issue. To know claim that all of Christendom is united in defense of this position is a bit silly, no.
September 2, 2010, 11:09 amAlessandra says:
Religion, politics, and sex. Always the best topics for trolling threads.
September 2, 2010, 11:10 amwhit says:
i’m claiming the knowledge to be able to READ and comprehend.
if you can do both, it’s pretty clear about these two issues. there are tons of things in judeo-christian doctrine that are very debatable/subjective and tons of things that aren’t
September 2, 2010, 11:11 amTamerlane says:
No one here has noted this and it’s slightly off-topic, but according to strict Islamic interpretation Obama is a Muslim and probably an apostate: He is Muslim for two equally and separately sufficient reasons: His father was Muslim and during his school years in Indonesia he repeatedly made the submission to Allah and recognition that Mohammed is the true prophet of Allah. He is probably an apostate — unless he was practicing taqiyya — because he later claimed to be a Christian.
I personally suspect Obama uses religion the same way that I suspect the Clintons do, i.e., as a useful prop to further political ambition.
September 2, 2010, 11:13 amBlue says:
Um, no. Not sure where you got that idea but it is utterly false. Puritans were Calvinist. To the extent that there are spiritual descendents of their faith, you’ll find them in hardcore Presbyterianism.
September 2, 2010, 11:13 amwhit says:
the founders were very shakespearean. the whole “more things in heaven and earth” thang…
September 2, 2010, 11:15 amElemenope says:
Funny how they are never smart enough to doubt their own intelligence.
You must not know many smart people. In my experience, the most intelligent are quite skeptical about their intelligence.
Doubt, though, has little to do with intelligence. I would say the reality is closer to Nietzsche’s account of doubt, which is that it is the luxury of strong faith. Those who believe firmly can doubt, while weaker faith cannot tolerate it.
September 2, 2010, 11:16 amBlue says:
And, indeed, that was the exact point I was making. Obama has said he is a Christian, he has never renounced any of the core beliefs (e.g., divinity of Christ, etc.), and as a result it is not up to me or any other Christian to judge his sincerity. That is a matter between he and God.
September 2, 2010, 11:17 amwhit says:
did they believe in the whole virgin birth thang. to borrow a topic from another thread, that would be dispositive. :)
or did they take the snatch opening monologue theory, that virgin was mistranslated from “young girl”?
September 2, 2010, 11:18 amJesse says:
If I may get theological:
The beauty of Christianity is that it does not rely on our works. There are porn stars, slave owners and murderers who are saved. There are people doing all sorts of good works — feeding the poor, helping the helpless, who are not. Once we start wading into “I know so and so is not a Christian because of [an action or ommission]…” then we have lost the plot.
“I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.”
Why not just take him at his word? If a camera followed me around all day and had access to my thoughts, there would be a sin recorded every 7.6 seconds. Yet I know I believe. The thief on the cross was saved — Paul, persecutor of early christians, saved.
September 2, 2010, 11:18 amBuzz says:
Well, not utterly false, but a false conclusion drawn from correct facts. Unitarianism grew out of the Congregational churches of New England, which themselves were outgrowths of the original Puritan churches. But the division into congregations (and parishes) was an administrative feat of the Massachusetts state church, not a theological division.
So, indirectly, there is a tie. Theologically, you’re correct.
September 2, 2010, 11:21 amBobC says:
As an atheist, I don’t want my first atheist president to be Obama or someone secret about it.
September 2, 2010, 11:21 amdirc says:
I’m surprised that no one has commented on the way in which Ms. Coulter invalidates part of her own argument with the last sentence of the column. She says that, “All liberals are atheists.” Her last sentence is, “There’s only one true Christian liberal in the country and that’s Mike Huckabee.” She has provided her own counterexample that disproves her statement.
Of course, the point of her column is not to logically prove that President Obama is an atheist. Ms Coulter uses that assertion as a hook to discuss the President’s past association with Rev. Wright, and along the way take shots at several other Democrats. She has picked a topic and is riffing on it the way most comedians do. Whether you find her routine amusing depends primarily on which side of the political divide you place yourself on.
Next week: David Kopel will highlight some outrageous assertion by Jon Stewart, point out his own disagreement with that assertion, and we can do this again.
September 2, 2010, 11:25 amBuzz says:
Oh, but he has. He stated publically that he believes that one can find justification with God through any number of religions, in effect that all roads lead to God. That is a direct repudiation of Jesus’ own words: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Not a way, a truth … Jesus said, The way …
September 2, 2010, 11:26 amJoseph Slater says:
That would be a great name for a band or maybe CD.
September 2, 2010, 11:28 amyankee says:
Yeah, “Obama is a Christian because being a racist Marxist doesn’t exclude you from being a Christian” is less a defense of Obama’s Christianity than an attempt to attack him as a racist Marxist.
September 2, 2010, 11:28 amJon Rowe says:
Whit: Jefferson rejected the Virgin Birth. It’s hard to say with the others because unless they clarified, we can only speculate. John Adams, for instance, like Jefferson’s guru Joseph Priestley, believed in the Resurrection. Pretty Christian? Perhaps not. They believed in NOT the Resurrection of an Incarnate God making an infinite ATONEMENT for man’s sins, but rather God the Father doing for the most moral man — his human “Son” Jesus of Nazareth, the most moral man ever to walk the face of Earth — what he would one day do for all “good” men, perhaps all men.
Accordingly the key Founders understanding of “Christian” was being a good person and that all good men, even those who didn’t understand themselves to be “Christians” were “Christians” and one day would be in Heaven.
The bad would be temporarily punished, eventually saved. The key Founders (the first 4 Presidents, Ben Franklin and others) were literally Christian-unitarian-universalists, as distinguished from the non-Christian Unitarian Universalism of today’s UUs.
September 2, 2010, 11:29 amWilliam O. B'Livion says:
There is no God but Allah and Mohommad is his Messenger.
Mainstream Islam disagrees with your position.
I don’t think that Obama is a Muslim. I don’t think he’s a Christian. To be either one must believe in something greater than ones self.
September 2, 2010, 11:29 amBlue says:
And this is exactly the sort of judging Christians ought not to do. If someone believes in the divinity of Christ, that he was resurrected, etc. then he or she is Christian. If they also believe that there are other paths to God they may be wrong…but that does not invalidate their core faith. (What might cause problems for them is if in their core belief they start mixing and matching religious systems–but, again, that’s between them and God.)
September 2, 2010, 11:35 amcocksure about me not thee says:
If you say so.
In my experience, especially online, the most vocal and insulting as to others’ intelligence (looks, eloquence, worthiness) are quite sure of their own.
Meanwhile, I’ll be looking into the affirmative action for dummies policy of MENSA to seek out better company.
September 2, 2010, 11:37 amElemenope says:
In my experience, especially online, the most vocal and insulting as to others’ intelligence (looks, eloquence, worthiness) are quite sure of their own.
Exactly. It’s an indication that they aren’t as smart as they think they are.
That is a direct repudiation of Jesus’ own words: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Not a way, a truth … Jesus said, The way …
How do you know that Siddhartha Gautama, say, isn’t an incarnation of Jesus, making Buddhists follow a different path that is also “the way, the truth…” and “…through me”.
September 2, 2010, 11:42 amyankee says:
Not really. The Qur’an affirms that Christians and Jews worship the same deity as Muslims. YHWH, in other words.
Jews and Christians actually agree that there is no deity but God, they just disagree about whether Mohammad is is his prophet.
September 2, 2010, 11:46 amAnderson says:
The bad would be temporarily punished, eventually saved.
A persistent trend in the Church, dating back at least as far as Origen, and by no means extinct today.
I personally think that Christians have a duty to *pray* that no one will go to hell, or failing that, that no one will stay there forever. How could we wish otherwise?
By definition, if God thinks hell is necessary, then he’s right, for reasons we can’t comprehend, so the final word is “thy will be done” — but there’s no harm in hoping that his will chooses mercy and not punishment.
September 2, 2010, 11:49 amThales says:
“My sense is Obama falls into #1, with a lot of doubts about the reality of Jesus, God, and the role of that reality in our everyday lives. Not uncommon. His mind is a stew of views about “social justice” tempered by Marxism, radicalism, some Islam, and a whole lot of selfish ego.”
Wow–I suppose all politicians have selfish ego, but where is the evidence for Marxism, radicalism, Islam? Mind you, I’m talking evidence, not assertions of people that oppose the President’s policies. If being for a Netherlands or Switzerland style system of private health insurance with subsidies and consumer protections is “radical,” I guess you’ve got him. What else in the President’s conduct is even left of center-right?
September 2, 2010, 11:51 amBuzz says:
What, to call Jesus a liar, as Obama implicitly does with his words? To not believe Jesus’ explicit claim to be the one and only way to God means one can still be a Christian? Sorry, but no.
September 2, 2010, 11:51 amBama 1L says:
I am Catholic so I think in terms of institutions. Institutionally, the English Puritans in this country overwhelmingly became Congregationalists, not Presbyterians. (The difference between those terms is ecclesiologically important.) If anything, the Congregationalists pulled American Presbyterians away from Calvin and the Scottish Reformation.
The largest Congregationalist body today is the United Church of Christ, which I have seen people confuse with the Unitarian Universalists. They are both theologically liberal and socially inclusive, so I guess I can see that up to a point. The UCC, however, is cognizably Christian (or else my son needs a new godmother). UUs have rejected Christian identity and creedal statements.
September 2, 2010, 11:55 amBuzz says:
Because they teach contradictory versions of truth. Buddhism and Christianity (with Judaism, for that matter)operate on a completely different vision of reality, and they teach contradictory means of reaching God/nirvana. (Even those two concepts are contradictory.) If Buddha and Jesus are just different incarnations of the same being, then he/she/it is serirously confused or a liar–not worthy of believing or following.
September 2, 2010, 11:55 amAnderson says:
What else in the President’s conduct is even left of center-right?
Indeed. What’s he done that the GOP would not have praised had Dubya done it?
National Romneycare? Modest Wall Street reform? An undersized stimulus package (compare the post-9/11 stimulus)?
The bad faith from the GOP is nauseating. Unfortunately, Obama and the Dems lack the competence to call them on it.
September 2, 2010, 11:58 amJesse says:
Yep. A real liberal would have nationalized the banks and moved to a NHS-style health care scheme… Instead, regulatory capture and crony capitalism are stronger under Obama than under Bush.
September 2, 2010, 12:04 pmtwolaneflash says:
I believe the words of Jesus to Obama would be:
“I never knew you.”. “Because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of My mouth.”. “Depart from Me, you worker of iniquity.”.
September 2, 2010, 12:06 pmyankee says:
Both the Unitarians and Universalists were Christians 200 years ago (or at least the Unitarians believed in the divinity of Christ). Eventually they became so theologically liberal that they were no longer recognizably Christian, so they gave up any claim of being Christian sometime in the 20th century, I think around when they merged.
September 2, 2010, 12:07 pmcocksure about me not thee says:
Thales: “Netherlands or Switzerland style system of private health insurance with subsidies and consumer protections”
You mean a kind of Dutch repair or mountain of Swiss cheese that is the 2407-page H.R. 3590?
—
I’m agnostic as to Obama’s church belief but do hope he and his party have a coming to Jesus moment this November. I have my doubts, though, which must mean my IQ is half a point higher than two years ago.
September 2, 2010, 12:09 pmrilkefan says:
I happened to reread some of the Gospels recently, and it’s pretty clear to me that there aren’t a lot of real Christians anywhere living out of poverty.
September 2, 2010, 12:17 pmElemenope says:
Because they teach contradictory versions of truth. Buddhism and Christianity (with Judaism, for that matter)operate on a completely different vision of reality, and they teach contradictory means of reaching God/nirvana.
In what specific ways are they contradictory?
September 2, 2010, 12:21 pmThales says:
“Instead, regulatory capture and crony capitalism are stronger under Obama than under Bush”
I’m not sure that’s a defensible statement, though both problems are obviously still present. It’s mostly a consequence of having to work with a Congress addicted to bribery, i.e. campaign cash from the private sector. So to get even a modest, imperfect health reform (note: Medicare for all/Canadian single payer would be much preferable to the NHS, which is second only to the U.S. as a health care system no one wants to emulate), big insurance and big pharma needed to be bought off with favors. Wall Street is so (justifiably) unpopular that modest reform was possible without too much cronyism built into the statute, but we really have to see how the agencies implement Dodd-Frank over the next few years.
September 2, 2010, 12:23 pmepluribus says:
PubliusFL says:
Of course. Who is irrational enough to believe that Coulter can impose a constitutional test? I didn’t suggest that. The purpose of the clause is to remove religious qualifications from the selection of officers. All are equally qualified, regardless of their religion (or lack of religion). Detailed dissection of Obama’s religious beliefs, promoted by Coulter’s inane commentary, is just what is going on here. His opponents want to make it clear that he shouldn’t be president because of his religion, whether they claim it is Muslim, atheist, non-orthodox Christian, or whatever. This is “testing” his religion, contrary to the spirit of the No Religious Test clause. In accord with the Founders, I believe that political argument about the president’s religious beliefs should be totally out of bounds.
September 2, 2010, 12:24 pmMorat20 says:
So, to wit:
1) Obama is a Christian.
2) Obama is an atheist.
3) Obama is a Marxist.
4) Obama is a Muslim.
5) Obama is a Black Liberation Theologist.
6) Obama is Evil.
7) Obama isn’t Evil.
Wow, sounds like a whole ton of projection to me. It seems like Obama is whatever you want him to be. Clever, that. The evil Muslim Christian Atheist Socialist Traitorous Yellow-Dog Communist Satanist Redistributionist Christian Murdering Foreign Citizen Scum he is.
Jesus Christ, what I wouldn’t give for a return to sane conservatives. Work this crap out of your system, please. Democrats make crappy conservatives, and you’re forcing them to do all the intellectual heavy-lifting while you natter on about birth certificates and try to mind-read someone’s faith while badly mangling concepts like ‘socialism’.
Also, if you’re calling Obama “Marxist” I’d ask you to go read Karl Marx, study a bit of history, and get back to me after you’re feeling sufficiently ashamed for making such an idiotic claim in public.
September 2, 2010, 12:24 pmgoodspkr says:
No one can tell what Obama believes. But he certainly looks more like a Marxists than a Marist. His charity giving was very low until he started making really big money. When he did he gave a lot more to Rev Wright, a number of literacy charities and the Congressional Black caucus. Not much to feeding the hungry or clothing the naked.
September 2, 2010, 12:25 pmAnderson says:
No, no, Rilkefan! Jesus WANTS you to be rich! My book/DVD combo will explain it all to you — just $39.95! Or come on down to my megachurch, and I’ll explain it to you in person — bring your checkbook!
… There are few more chilling words in the gospels than Jesus’s comment, “I tell you the truth, they already have their reward.”
September 2, 2010, 12:29 pmA. Zarkov says:
We have this man who is president of the United States, and it seems no one knows for sure what his religious beliefs are. One would think that somewhere along his road to the presidency a newsman would have asked him, “Are you a Christian in the sense that you believe in the divinity of Jesus?” Is that so hard to do? It seems we really know very little about him outside his two vanity books. Otherwise his whole career is mysterious, and he’s left no paper trail. Who is this guy? He’s also closed off all his records. We can’t even read his senior thesis at Columbia.
As for Christianity and Marxism, the two are fundamentally incompatible. Marx propounded a materialistic theory of the universe– one devoid of any kind of divine guidance. One has to twist both Marxism and Christianity completely out of shape to create any kind of fusion. You are left with a mere grab bag of slogans.
September 2, 2010, 12:29 pmrilkefan says:
Literacy, apparently, is overrated.
September 2, 2010, 12:30 pmA. Zarkov says:
Have you read your Marx? Tell me do you think Lenin was a Marxist, or Mao? Why?
September 2, 2010, 12:32 pmBaseballhead says:
This is probably true for most people. It’s tough to give away money when you’re worried about making food and shelter, car payments, college funds, etc. Big money, though, changes everything.
September 2, 2010, 12:35 pmwhit says:
how about some sane reading comprehension on your part. i could be characterized as a conservative, and i’ve already said i don’t KNOW what obama believes, but i’m willing to believe he is a christian, as he claims to be, nor would i ever claim he’s a marxist. that’s absurd.
he’s a typical left moderate statist, frankly. he is certainly not a marxist, nor is he a liberal. this is a guy who is, or claims to be, against gay marriage, has been weak as hell on getting rid of DADT, is pro-mj criminalization, pro-school reform (a la rahm and arne), and certainly not a pacifist by any stretch.
September 2, 2010, 12:35 pmBuzz says:
Well, how much time do you have? I’ll just paint very quickly with a broad brush: Christianity teaches that we live in a real, physical world created by God and called good but tainted by the Fall, to be redeemed finally by God. Buddhism teaches that the world we live in is an illusion.
Christianity teaches that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but our sins are forgiven by Christ’s atoning death on the Cross, if we accept that act by faith. Buddhism recognizes suffering but says it’s simply a result of desire. Snuff out desire and you snuff out suffering. (There’s actually a germ of truth there, but it’s not desiring qua desiring that’s the problem; it’s desiring the wrong things, according to Christianity.)
Christianity teaches that the redeemed will live forever in fellowship with God. (Not in some ethereal heaven, by the way, but in a new heaven and a new earth, as Scripture clearly teaches.) The nirvana of Buddhism means, literally, “snuffing out,” as one snuffs out a candle. We should desire (!) to cease to exist, bringing about an end of desiring and therefore an end of suffering.
And that’s just the quick course.
September 2, 2010, 12:36 pmLitigator London says:
You were criticising President Obama for saying to his daughter that he did not know what happens after death. That is an indisputable fact. Nobody “knows”. One may “believe” in life after death, but one will not “know”” until after death.
“I know that my Redeemer liveth” fits the music better but it is an inaccurate statement.
Christianity comes in considerably more than just 57 varieties. Therefore one can only use a term like “orthodox” by reference to a particular sect. For example take common Christian belief in the procession of the Holy Ghost and the famous “filioque” of the Nicene Creed. For Roman Catholics, the doctrine is that the Holy Ghost proceed from both the Father and the Son, so for them that belief is orthodox, but Orthodox Churches believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone, so for the Orthodox Christians the Roman Catholic belief is heterodox (and vice versa).
And that’s before one gets into the really weird “rapture ready” varieties among those who call themselves Christians. Nor do Christians have a monopoly on the weird.
All one can really say about all this name calling for political ends is that it seems to lack the charity which is a universal precept for all believers and the reserve which is an essential attribute of gentlefolk. But alas and alack, it is a long time since the people of either the UK or the USA expected their politicians to behave as gentlefolk should.
September 2, 2010, 12:39 pmAnderson says:
do you think Lenin was a Marxist
A *heretical* Marxist!
Mao of course was just Mao.
September 2, 2010, 12:40 pmwhit says:
um, no. the fact that there should be no religious test is not the same as saying that a discussion of a president (or candidate’s ) religious beliefs is out of bounds and/or arguments/debates etc. about his TRUTHFULNESS (let alone his religion) is out of bounds.
much like many people claim that the whole clinton impeachment was about “sex” . it wasn’t . it was about lying in court iow perjury (i realize he was not convicted of it. but it was perjury imo).
regardless of what obama’s religious beliefs or lack thereof are, people are free to talk, debate, or even make voting decisions based on that. that doesn’t violate the constitution.
god knows people make voting decisions on all kinds of exceptionally shallow stuff – like how much nixon sweated – so, i don’t see why religion is some sort of sacred (no pun intended) untouchable area of discussion.
September 2, 2010, 12:41 pmAnderson says:
… Whit, I didn’t think that Morat was targeting you in particular. There’s been some nutty stuff in this thread.
September 2, 2010, 12:43 pmwhit says:
on a comparative basis, especially when compared to people with similar incomes— his charitable giving, frankly – sucked. i think that’s pretty inarguable.
September 2, 2010, 12:43 pmwhit says:
i know, but he made broadbrush claims about conservatives. i was just speaking my part. what evil or goodness lurks in obama’s heart? only the shadow knows.
September 2, 2010, 12:45 pmBaseballhead says:
I’m sure there are a lot of things about Obama that you find inarguable. Yet, here we are.
September 2, 2010, 12:46 pmMartin McPhillips says:
The “no religious test” for office clause is about legal requirements, not about the prudential judgement of voters.
Would Americans countenance a candidate for president who had spent twenty years as a congregant at a white racist “Christian Identity” church? Of course not.
Well, does that same sort of clear rational judgement apply to a black candidate who attends an equivalent racist “black theology” church? Apparently not, this time at least. Perhaps on the next occasion someone with that sort of background attempts to become president, the media will actually report on it, instead of scrupulously hiding it.
As I commented above, the videos of Jeremiah Wright were not mere splenetic outbursts taken out of context. They were in fact less offensive than the racist “theology” at the foundation of the church.
Obama was allowed to sidestep the videos with his “I only attended the Klan rallies, I never burned any of the crosses” head fake. The fact is that by going to that church for most of his adult life he was immersed in Cone’s theology. He took his children to that church.
All the messianic glitter that was thrown up around this rather crummy man, with thrills running up legs, the usual suspects in the media were too cowardly to spend a day finding out the truth about the church he turned himself over to.
And this is a discussion about America now, on the path that supposedly led beyond the racialist past of slavery and segregation. We are supposedly in the era of civil rights, where the atavistic nature of this church is unacceptable. Period. But it was never properly reported, and is still not being properly reported.
September 2, 2010, 12:48 pmrilkefan says:
Have you read Acts? 4:32?
September 2, 2010, 12:48 pmwhit says:
how do we know jesus even said that? you are aware that there were not stenographers walking around with jesus (assuming he existed) writing down his every word verbatim
even given that he did say that, and it was correct, does it necessarily mean that one has to believe/know of jesus during their life on earth, or that one can come to jesus after death iow it’s the only way one will achieve salvation, etc.?
it would be pretty absurd to believe that he meant that people who had never even heard of him (like in the jungles of south america) are therefore damned for eternity.
September 2, 2010, 12:51 pmwhit says:
and there are a lot of things that are inarguable, all wanking aside.
regardless of what *i* find
September 2, 2010, 12:53 pmBama 1L says:
No less an authority than Augustine of Hippo (whom we revere as a saint) stated that there is no divine plan evident in secular history; empires do not always rise or fall because of God’s favor and you should not go searching for divine agency in human events. So materialist conceptions of political, economic, and social history have Christian imprimatur.
September 2, 2010, 12:55 pmAnderson says:
what evil or goodness lurks in obama’s heart? only the shadow knows.
Ann Coulter knows, and that b—- can’t even cast no shadow.
… Anyway, I suggest you answer Morat’s call for sane conservatives by responding “present!”
September 2, 2010, 12:55 pmSarcastro says:
I’ve always suspected scientists of heresy, with their materialistic views of the universe, but now I have proof! And economists are the worst!
September 2, 2010, 12:55 pmbobo says:
There is no doubt that Christianity is a socialist religion. I find it hard to accept Christians who can find any reason to view it otherwise. If you are a Catholic, you are brought up on the New Testament and that alone. Christ’s admonitions to ” Feed the hungry, clothe the naked.” etc. are clear. I wonder if God, at the Judgement, will feel more than a little kindness to those who did not believe in him but acted with charity in life and I wonder how God will judge those that purported to to be strict followers of his laws but may have allowed the oppression, and misery of fellow humans to pass by unnoticed. I suspect the chute to Hell will be stuffed to overflowing with more than a few of the righteous.
September 2, 2010, 12:57 pmrilkefan says:
Every good tree bears good fruit.
News flash – the Gospels are pretty confusing in many ways.
September 2, 2010, 12:57 pmwhit says:
there is a huge difference between saying
1) give to charity. it’s a good thing
2) govt. must take your money and choose what charities to give to (among other things)
socialism is all about (2)
christianity doesn’t mention (2) much, if at all.
that;’s the critical difference.
there is a HUGE difference between acting with charity with one’s own money with one’s own free will, and saying that govt. should take from each according to their means by force and then give to charity
that is a huge distinction that the “christianity is actually a socialist religion” people fail to grasp. or conveniently ignore.
and it makes ALL the difference
not to mention that charity without choice isn’t really charity at all
September 2, 2010, 1:01 pmnovaculus says:
Pardon me if I evaluate the evidence, I just can’t help myself.
Obama was raised as a Muslim. He began attending Trinity when he launched his political career. Trinity just happens to be the largest and most politically active black church on the South Side. Its pastor is a bigot who preaches a theology largely unrelated to mainstream Christianity, to the point of being nearly unrecognizable as Christianity to many Christians. It appears to be Marxism in religious drag, and calls to mind Obama’s many other intersections with Marxists (including Marxists domestic terrorists) and Marxism. Obama as President does little or nothing that reflects personal Christian faith, and his remarks regarding “collective salvation” are at odds with fundamental Christian belief in individual salvation. He displays disdain for a certain class of Christians generally (the “bitter clingers”). He engages in a broad range of apologetic gestures to the Muslim world, and many are angered by his demeaning of America in the process. He makes a speech in Cairo, bows to the King of Saudi Arabia, bans the terminology “Islamist terrorist” from the government lexicon, and even goes so far as to conscript NASA (!!!) as a tool of his outreach policies.
The evidence supports at least three different conclusions fairly evenly: (1) He is an Islamist “sleeper”, or (2) a non-believer who is simply exploiting the appearance of religiosity as a political tactic, or (3) a Christian in his own mind even if his beliefs diverge greatly from mainstream Christian beliefs. None of those results suggest mainstream Christianity, yet folks are supposed to accept Obama’s bald-faced assertions regarding his Christian faith? I have fought many battles in open court, and I would approach defending Obama’s assertion of Christian faith in court with much trepidation, even if the standard of evidence was preponderance. I don’t see how anyone could form a firm opinion about Obama’s religious beliefs based on presently available evidence.
September 2, 2010, 1:01 pmBuzz says:
First, the “how do we know he said that” argument is not pertinent here. Obama claism to follow Jesus, so therefore he would probably say he knows what Jesus teaches by what’s recorded about him in the Bible. But Obama is faced with then having to explain why he says he follows Jesus but doesn’t believe some of the things he said. By what criterion does Obama pick and choose which parts he chooses to believe and which not. I’m not sure he could say anything beyond “I keep the parts I personally like and not the parts I don’t like”–in other words, arbitrary.
Second, the Bible doesn’t say we are condemned to hell for not having heard of Jesus; we are condemned by our own actions, and in our heart of hearts we know that. (Romans 2:14-15 is a very good piece of theology as well as psychologically astute.)God, through his grace and mercy, chooses to save us from what we already deserve.
September 2, 2010, 1:02 pmRPT says:
Thanks for the reference to DW. No. 4 is the right choice. Re Obama, and others, you have to observe how the person lives and draw your own conclusion.
September 2, 2010, 1:09 pmBuzz says:
Huh? To say that God is not the direct cause of some events does not mean that God does not exist, as Marxism teaches, nor does it logically lead one to conclude that all that exists is matter and energy, as a true Marxist would believe. It just means that sometimes God allows the natural cause-and-effect of our decisions/actions to play out. Even the Bible teaches that there are consequences for our actions.
September 2, 2010, 1:10 pmJon Rowe says:
“Second, the Bible doesn’t say we are condemned to hell for not having heard of Jesus; we are condemned by our own actions, and in our heart of hearts we know that.”
This is a problem I have with orthodox views of salvation. Ultimately you’ll find a piece of the Bible and “load” that in as starting point. But no, in my heart of hearts I most certainly do NOT know that I deserve eternal punishment for finite sins. In fact, I’d argue in their heart of hearts the overwhelming majority of orthodox Christians hope that punishment is temporary even if they don’t admit to it because they are wedded to their own understanding of various proof texts.
September 2, 2010, 1:11 pmThales says:
novaculus writes: “I don’t see how anyone could form a firm opinion about Obama’s religious beliefs based on presently available evidence.”
That is in part because you think there is “evidence” for such statements as “Obama was raised as a Muslim” and “[h]e is an Islamist “sleeper”.” You must have a terrible time weighing the pros and cons of alchemy and chemistry.
September 2, 2010, 1:16 pmBama 1L says:
One can apply Marx’s theories to the study of secular history and politics without accepting his atheism.
Did you intend to set up a “no true Marxist” response? If so, that was charitable and I salute you.
September 2, 2010, 1:16 pmBuzz says:
The issue isn’t how much punishment is correct for a finite sin. The issue is disbelief and disobedience. God says we are sinners and we must repent. If we do not, we do not believe what God says and therefore disobey him.
In other words, it’s not X amount of punishment is correct for X finite sin. Put another way, we are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. To just “punish” an individual sin does nothing to treat the overall condition, just as taking cough medicine does nothing to treat the overall pneumonia. One is a symptom, the other is the underlying condition.
Jesus came to save us from the condition, not the acts that are merely its symptoms.
Besides, no sin is finite because it is committed ultimately against an infinitely holy God. (Check out Psalm 51)
September 2, 2010, 1:18 pmJon Rowe says:
“God, through his grace and mercy, chooses to save us from what we already deserve.”
Perhaps you could have added, “chooses to save SOME of us from what we already deserve.” That’s the Calvinist “fit.” Those folks who have never heard of Jesus and die and go to Hell were simply not of God’s elect, so to Hell with them, they just get what they deserve anyway.
One famous Calvinist rejecting the “age of accountability” doctrine noted that youngsters, including fetuses in the womb, who are of the Elect and who die go to Heaven, the others, to Hell. That is, the souls of non-Elect aborted babies (presumably most of them) go to Hell.
September 2, 2010, 1:19 pmBuzz says:
Huh!? You implied that a Christian saint, Augustine, supported Marxist materialism. That is simply illogical based on the simple evidence. Ahd what does it have to do with the study of history or politics?
September 2, 2010, 1:23 pmJon Rowe says:
“To just ‘punish’ an individual sin does nothing to treat the overall condition,…”
You’ve never heard of the concept of rehabilitative punishment?
As to the rest, I may be able to buy into a concept like annihilation on those grounds. Or perhaps Hell being a place where you get to go thru eternity in more or less the same non-saved state on Earth, playing pool with your buddies and whatnot.
But most folks who hold to the more traditional orthodox view of eternal damnation describe it as something like eternal torture. And human beings most certainly don’t deserve that for disobeying God. So I could see Hell like not letting your daughter go to Disneyworld (Heaven) but instead making her spend the day (as she ordinarily would) in her room. She might be upset by the missed opportunity.
But not eternal torture or eternal mistery. I think even you in your heart of hearts don’t buy that.
September 2, 2010, 1:25 pmSmooth, like a Rhapsody says:
Bama 1L
So metaphysical dualism is logically consistent with dialectical materialism?
September 2, 2010, 1:28 pmBuzz says:
It’s also the Scriptural “fit.” “”I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Romans 9:15, echoing Exodus 33:19). It’s also illustrated in Jesus’ parable of the vineyard workers, where some who worked longer were paid the same as those who worked shorter, but they had no right to complain since they were paid what they agreed to when they started working and therefore got what they deserved. The vineyard owner simply chose to shower extra grace on some for his own reasons.
September 2, 2010, 1:29 pmCJColucci says:
One may “believe” in life after death, but one will not “know”” until after death.
Actually, we won’t “know” unless there is life after death. If there isn’t, we won’t know because we’ll be dead.
September 2, 2010, 1:33 pmSeems kind of unfair. If the believers are right, they will know; if they’re wrong, they won’t. If the non-believers are right, they won’t know; if they’re wrong, they will.
Buzz says:
“Deserve” based on what standard? Yours? Besides, Scripture never uses the word “torture.” It says “torment.” They’re close, but not quite the same.
I can be tormented by the fact that I failed to take advantage of an opportunity and decided not to follow good advice and therefore suffered some loss. That is not the same as torture.
C.S. Lewis put it well. Hell is the absence of God. If you wanted nothing to do with God in this life (and not just your wish-fulfillment idea of god but the real God), why would you want to spend an eternity with him? It is God saying, “Thy will be done.” The gates of hell are locked from the inside.
September 2, 2010, 1:36 pmBuzz says:
Paging Dr. Pascal, paging Dr. Pascal …
September 2, 2010, 1:45 pmDSW says:
When it comes to Coulter, that’s true for just about everything she writes
September 2, 2010, 1:51 pmRecovering Lutheran says:
Mr. Kopel is applying a purely secular definition of “Christian” when talking about President Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
To be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus and to accept Him as a personal Savior. Being a member of a church or even the clergy is not necessarily proof of being a Christian.
Thus, people may believe that one can be a Christian by simply saying they are, but that is false. Christianity is not like membership in a health club or insurance plan that gives you a fancy card that entitles you to service. God will not consult church rosters on Judgment Day.
Rev. Wright is a foul-mouthed racist whose views on Christianity I reject. He may have been a true warrior for the Christian faith at one time, but it appears to me that radical politics have consumed him utterly. But whether or not he winds up in Heaven or Hell is not my call, since I do not see what God sees and there is always the blessed possibility of repentance.
September 2, 2010, 1:53 pmepluribus says:
If I were feeling particularly religious, this thread would do one whole hell of a lot to correct the feeling, and fast. I used to wonder why there were almost a thousand different religious denominations, all claiming to be the true Christian religion. I no longer wonder.
September 2, 2010, 2:02 pmAnderson says:
The evidence supports at least three different conclusions fairly evenly: (1) He is an Islamist “sleeper”
I don’t understand the words “evidence,” “supports,” or “conclusions” in that sentence; they are not used in the ordinary senses of the terms.
… If the gates of hell are locked from the inside, then repentance can unlock them. Of course, Buzz (and Lewis) can work around this with the Calvinist two-step:
(1) only grace allows one to repent; and
(2) grace is withheld from some souls.
Fine, if you want to believe that, but then don’t talk about how people are selfishly choosing to stay in hell. There’s zero merit to anyone who’s saved, and they don’t even deserve to be praised for their faith.
September 2, 2010, 2:07 pmRKF says:
I’m not sure why anyone would presume that the attendee at any house of worship shares all of the idiosyncrasies of the faith of the pastor, especially in their political applications. That’s certainly not my experience as a Roman Catholic. My pastor always says that you stay where you are being fed. One can decide on a Church on a spiritual level while still rejecting large elements of the preaching that one is exposed to on a weekly basis. At least I hope so, because it’s been my experience.
I have a wonderful pastor, a good and holy man, who provides spiritual guidance for myself and my family. We also have widely varying politics, including, on occasion, their application to our faith.
It would never remotely occur to me that I should presume I know someone’s individual belief structure based upon the preaching of the pastor where they attend. Though Roman Catholics especially believe that we are part of a larger faith community, including our parish structure, many of us select our parish for a variety of other reasons than the close adherence to the particular belief structure the pastor. Geography plays a big role, as well as one’s connection to the fellow parishioners. A good friend stays at his parish despite my invitations because they support his wife’s favorite charity. And that parish has many aspects that he disagrees with.
As far as being able to determine whether anyone else is an authentic Christian, it is an exercise I usually seek to avoid. If pressed, I still think that Garry Wills’ formulation that orthodoxy is tested by no more than adherence to the Nicene Creed is sound. Few of us would survive being put to test of authenticity by an adversary.
And the relationship between the current catechism and the liberation theology of Leonardo Boff, etc. is far more complex than suggested here. The preferential option for the poor is mainstream Catholicism, and that originated from liberation theology. Many far more learned than I have come up with different formulations for the reason that the CDF “came down” on liberation theology, but I still formulate it as the simple fact that many of my beloved Jesuits actually accepted roles in the Sandinista government. This is a far larger issue than can be treated in the caricatures I have read lately
September 2, 2010, 2:08 pmArkady says:
Hmmm. Puts him in company with Thomas Jefferson, if true. And that ain’t bad company.
September 2, 2010, 2:10 pmRKF says:
A priest Once explained to me why almost all eulogies are laudatory, even when the decedent was seemingly unworthy.
Justification means that repentance can solve all cents, even repentance made after a life of misdeeds. It is not for us to pronounce authoritatively the direction of the deceased.
I agree strongly with your formulation
September 2, 2010, 2:19 pmBuzz says:
Which is the orthodox teaching. We are not saved by our own merit but by Christ’s. The theological term is “imputed righteousness,” “foreign righteousness” or, even more confusing, “alien righteousness.”
And there’s no contradiction between Lewis and Calvin that I can see, since Calvin would teach that God’s election of a person means they would desire God, not want to have nothing to do with him.
I do think Calvin was wrong in his doctrine of double-predestination, though. No one is predestined to hell; we get hell because that’s what we deserve by our unbelief and our actions.
September 2, 2010, 2:24 pmBama 1L says:
The Church’s concern for material conditions affecting workers, and identification of them as a causal factor in political and economic developments, has been pretty obvious since, say, Rerum novarum. The Church does not say, “God will work it out.” The Church says, “Materialism has sufficient explanatory power for secular systems, but we must rise above that only through Christ.”
So I think the Church admits to a great extent that, were Marx’s atheism correct, his materialism would be. When you take Augustine’s admonition about history seriously, you see that Christians should be open to Marxist interpretations of secular events.
I am not saying that, but maybe it’s the terminology. I take metaphysical dualism to mean that everything is a contest between God and Satan. Augustine rejected this (I think you will disagree with me on that) and particularly said not to read human events as part of a metaphysical contest. Since there are conflicts and changes over time, but they cannot be shown to be either divinely commanded or the result of metaphysical conflict, materialist dialectic should at least be considered as an explanatory paradigm.
September 2, 2010, 2:29 pmAnderson says:
Buzz, defining God as functionally equivalent to Satan has always struck me as the most mysterious thing about Calvinism (and about Augustine before him).
Btw, there is no reason to suppose that God’s “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” in Exodus refers to a future life; Moses is expressly talking to God about the historical fate of Israel as a nation.
Paul’s general modus operandi is to grab his proof-texts as suits his argument, and anyway, there is a good reason why Romans 9 is not a perennial favorite of the Church.
September 2, 2010, 2:34 pmBama 1L says:
Arguments based on particular English words are never dispositive of scriptural meaning.
September 2, 2010, 2:35 pmHelene Edwards says:
Kopel, why don’t you try describing what it is that anyone in Wright’s congregation needed to be liberated from? Liberated from slavery? No? Then how about liberated from Jim Crow-style laws? Gone already? OK, how about in-your-face hostility from whites? Never seen it in an urban setting like Chicago? I agree, neither have I. Liberated from the need to speak Standard English? Already accomplished. Liberated from the need to keep your hands to yourselves in any mild disagreement with anyone physically smaller? Same. Liberated from having to actually be handicapped in order to get a placard? Mission accomplished. Liberated from having to meet any performance standards at work? You got it. I’m searching, Kopel, help me.
September 2, 2010, 2:42 pmJon Rowe says:
Re separation from God. Another problem I have with Scripture is the texts seem to contradict themselves. The Bible elsewhere intimates that an omnipresent God is in Hell and personally delivers the punishment.
I know a lot of smart orthodox biblicists get around the “contraction” problem by clever hermenuetics where seemingly contradictory passages are explained to not contradict themselves. But that results in an almost infinite number of interpretations of Sola Scriptura, each of them contradictionless, but that nonetheless contradict one another. For instance, either God is present in Hell or its separation from God, it can’t be both. We can do this with every single letter of TULIP. The Atonement is either “limited” or its not. You either can or can’t lose your salvation. The Bible can go both ways on these and many other issues. If I were to convert, I’d strongly consider Roman Catholicism for that very reason. Prostestantism with its “Sola Scriptura” is schizophrenic.
September 2, 2010, 2:47 pmBuzz says:
Ah, but you’re committing the fallacy of equivocation, mixing up the meaning of the word “materialism.” For Marx, “materialism” means there is no supernatural. Although he wouldn’t express it this way since he was before Einstein, Marx believed that all that exists is matter and energy, and it was subject, per Hegel, to a dialectical process.
You seem to be using “materialism” to mean caring about the material needs of our fellow man. Two different meanings there.
And metaphysical dualism is not the Manichaeism that Augustine rightly rejected; it means that reality exists in two forms: spiritual and physical. Marx believed only in the physical, hence he was a metaphysical monist.
Need to make sure we’re using terms correctly or at least in the same sense so that we’re not talking past each other.
September 2, 2010, 2:50 pmmattski says:
If you paid closer attention you’d have noticed that I wasn’t complaining. But I was observing.
September 2, 2010, 2:54 pmG.R. Mead says:
You mistake the result for the precept that brings it about. Communism and various species of socialism advocate justice by means of giving according to need and surrendering private possession as a matter of imposed policy. According to the Gospel this is the fruit of faith in the Truth, as a change opf personal disposition — and not a means to anything, justice or otherwise. If one finds one cannot do it, then one has issues with the validity of one’s faith — if one actually CAN surrender all of that, then one need not, or can do so, as it seems fit … but the dangers of self-deception are indeed obvious. In Christian teaching, justice and the Kingdom are not found in this world. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”
September 2, 2010, 2:58 pmAnderson says:
We can do this with every single letter of TULIP.
I very much regret not recalling the title of a book I found a while back, presented as a chapter-by-chapter debate between two theologians on Calvinism, yes or no.
It was quite interesting, and amusing in how politely the debate started and how nasty it got towards the end. The takeaway was that predestination, eternal damnation, etc. have some scriptural support, but so do the contrary positions.
… I must admit, if the case of Sinners v. Angry God ended up in the SCOTUS, it would probably apply Chevron deference to hold that (1) the scriptures are ambiguous, and (2) the position of the administrative agency in question (the Church) is not an unreasonable reading of the statute.
Which is just another reason why I’m glad we have separation of church and state.
September 2, 2010, 3:02 pmBuzz says:
But that’s not how a Calvinst sees it. God is perfectly just, righteous, and holy. He cannot be otherwise, as it would violate his nature and he would cease to be God. Therefore he must reject anything that is not perfectly just, righteous, or holy. (That is why he imputes Jesus’ rightousness to us; we have none in ourselves.)
God doesn’t send people to hell because he takes pleasure in it; he is rejecting that which is not perfectly just, righteous, and holy, and people freely make themselves that way by their actions and unbelief.
Why God chooses to do things one way and not another is way beyond my ken, and I wouldn’t begin to try to figure out why. That is part of God’s message to us: his ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts. He is God, I am not.
September 2, 2010, 3:03 pmmattski says:
Oh, I guess that’s why you wrote:
September 2, 2010, 3:08 pmAJ says:
Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole” show examined the possibility that when man became self aware, to deal with the uncertainty and finality of death, his brain necessarily created a predisposition for belief in God. So religion and the quest for God or gods were perhaps an evolutionary necessity to quell man’s understandable fear and despair, while providing excellent tools for social control. The brain triggers the “I believe” neuron and one is touched by the Holy Spirit. Undoubtedly religion inspires, as AA meetings and Catholic ministries attests to, but doesn’t religion generally ask us to check our rational brain at the back pew and imagine things we can’t see, hear, and touch (God is watching you at that computer, type nice things!).
The narrative of Christianity or any religion fascinates me. Christianity’s grand revelation proclaims: God sacrificed Himself to Himself to change the rules of the after-life He created (say that three times and you are off to Kansas). Unfortunately he chose to execute this plan before the 24-hour news cycle or even before the age of enlightenment, where miracles, resurrections, and prophecies could be tested by science, broadcast by FIOS, mocked by John Stewart, and nit-picked by David Gregory (Gregory: “Here’s what Jesus ACTUALLY said, cue the tape”). Now we scour the Scripture to find just the right passage to keep the meme going.
Is Obama a Christian? He seemed awfully derisive towards people “clinging to guns and religion” but that wasn’t supposed to leak out. In the end, Obama is an opportunist who will be as religious as 51% of the country needs him to be: Pro-traditional marriage….certainly if it helps in Florida. Dump Reverend Wright? It was like watching a balloon soar after having the ballast cut loose. Obama is too big for Christianity!
September 2, 2010, 3:11 pmmattski says:
And yet, you’re awfully fond of speaking with presumed authority about that which you know nothing about.
September 2, 2010, 3:12 pmBuzz says:
You’re making a category mistake, seeing hell as a place instead of a condition. Yes, we figuratively speak of it as a place, but you could travel the entire expanse of the universe and never find a place that is hell–or heaven. Hell is a metaphysical condition–separation from God. Heaven is a metaphysical condition–where God is.
You’re taking he biblical teaching that God is omnipresent and saying that therefore he must be present in a place called hell.
September 2, 2010, 3:13 pmJam says:
I haven’t been at the VC in a while.
1) G.R. Mead: A long time ago I had a discussion with a self-labeled socialist about Acts 4. Amazing how easily they miss that the account deals with voluntary and personal actions. To quote Acts 5:3,4:
2) This is the way that Obama can, once and for all, settle whether he is a Christian (pretty simple, really) — unquivocally state his belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; that Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, resurrected on the 3rd day and now sits at the right hand of God the Father; that Jesus is God in the flesh; that at Jesus triumphal return all men’s “knees will bow and acknowledge that Jesus is LORD.”
September 2, 2010, 3:16 pmBuzz says:
Because he has told us some things about himself. Not having total knowledge does not mean you have no knowledge, an elementary lesson in logic and epistemology.
September 2, 2010, 3:21 pmElemenope says:
This is the way that Obama can, once and for all, settle whether he is a Christian (pretty simple, really) — unquivocally state his belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God; that Jesus was crucified, dead, buried, resurrected on the 3rd day and now sits at the right hand of God the Father; that Jesus is God in the flesh; that at Jesus triumphal return all men’s “knees will bow and acknowledge that Jesus is LORD.”
Should he also recite the pledge of allegiance for you, while he’s at it?
September 2, 2010, 3:27 pmmattski says:
But Jesus didn’t say what you just said. Jesus said:
And when I look around at conservative Christian politicians and their Republican friends I see a bunch of money-grubbing wealth-worshippers. Why do you think that is?
They make the early Christian community look like … Marxists by comparison.
September 2, 2010, 3:30 pmOrenWithAnE says:
Except of course that there are any number of Coptics and non-unitarian Christians that don’t believe any of this stuff.
The First Council of Nicea was not empowered to decree matters of theological importance in perpetuity and across the entire faith. The FCN decided what the Christians that attended the FCN believed. Nothing more, nothing less.
September 2, 2010, 3:35 pmmattski says:
What has he told you personally?
(And why would you trust a very old book—which was not written until decades or centuries after the events it purports to describe—and several translations on a topic as important as this?)
September 2, 2010, 3:35 pmElemenope says:
Buzz, every supposed contradiction between Christianity and Buddhism you listed could easily instead be chalked up to different metaphors used by God to communicate with different peoples.
And your understanding of nirvana is, um, weak.
September 2, 2010, 3:35 pmBuzz says:
But look at the incident in its full context. It was not a general command to all believers. It was a specific command to a specific person, a rich young man. What is the very next verse? “When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.”
The issue isn’t wealth per se; it’s what is your god? As Jesus goes on to say, it’s hard for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven because they are self-sufficient and believe they have all they need. And “rich” also has a spiritual sense, meaning that they believe they are rich in righteousness, just as this young man believed because he thought he’d kept all the commandments when it was clear he hadn’t. He did not love God with his whole heart and mind; he loved his wealth.
September 2, 2010, 3:39 pmJoseph Slater says:
This is the way that Obama can, once and for all, settle whether he is a Christian
What you (and the folks on the birther threads) don’t seem to understand is that Obama is under no obligation of any kind to “settle” completely B.S. issues that political hack opponents like Coulter, Orly Taitz, etc. raise. This is especially true since these folks raise these issues for all sorts of bad and stupid reasons: either becasue they’re crazy or ignorant, or because they’re acting in bad faith trying to create political damage by lies and cons, or some combination of all of these.
September 2, 2010, 3:43 pmBuzz says:
There are many good arguments for the reliability of Scripture for anyone who is truly interested. But for someone who wants to merely argue, it would be pointless.
But if you’re interested, I’d recommend for starters the works of Bruce Metzger for the New Testament and Walt Kaiser for the Old Testament.
September 2, 2010, 3:46 pmSarcastro says:
A true Christian alienates people of other faiths. Obama has yet to do so. Ergo, he’s something else.
September 2, 2010, 3:46 pmBuzz says:
Ah, the old “metaphor” dodge. Look up the meaning of metaphor and then get back to me.
September 2, 2010, 3:47 pmmattski says:
Elemenope,
Actually, I think Buzz is not far off on Nirvana. To the best of my knowledge the idea is “cessation.” Period.
I don’t think it’s a great idea to try to equate Buddhism & Christianity since Buddhism doesn’t mention a creator or imply one. As far as the moral teachings go, I would agree with you that there is quite a bit in common. The reason for that, imo, is simply that morality is universal. And oddly enough, there’s no need for an appeal to authority to back it up.
The golden rule emerges from reason, that is, paying attention to our inner and outer universes.
September 2, 2010, 4:00 pmOrenWithAnE says:
But beyond the scripture there are any number of later earthly authorities (such as the FCN) that people are demanding he acknowledge as perpetual and inerrant.
There’s nothing in scripture that mandates the Nicene Creed, for instance.
September 2, 2010, 4:10 pmmattski says:
Buzz,
You seem like a nice guy. But there is no good argument for promises of eternal life which are contingent on good behavior.
Tell me this, which body will you inhabit in heaven?
Ironically, as a Buddhist I do have an issue with life after death, which I unfortunately have to take on authority since I don’t have any reliable experience to draw upon. The only thing is, it’s a different sort of a problem from yours.
Chogyam Trungpa was once asked something to this effect:
To which he is said to have replied:
September 2, 2010, 4:12 pmElemenope says:
Ah, the old “metaphor” dodge. Look up the meaning of metaphor and then get back to me.
Speaking of condescension, the idea as it is generally understood in theology is the Condescension of God, an attempt to solve the problem of why the Bible, for example, is filled to the brim with bad/inaccurate explanations of physical or biological processes. The idea is that the text represents what God thought humans could understand for the time and context they were in; you can’t explain, say, quantum mechanics or even the germ theory of disease to illiterate shepherds 2500 years ago, so you work with what you have.
Likewise, one can understand the seemingly competing concepts of heaven and nirvana as separate attempts (in different cultural contexts) to explain a concept too alien or complicated for puny human minds in terms they might start to understand. Different cultures prime individuals in that culture to more easily accept certain ideas, and God (being all all-knowing and all) knowing this molds His message to the ideological predilections and limitations of knowledge of his given audience.
September 2, 2010, 4:13 pmAJ says:
Looking for facts and evidence appears to be a lost cause when discussing religion. I’ve been repeatedly directed to 2 Timothy 3:7 “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth” which translates to me “just get in line, shut up, and believe….everyone else is.” Religion withers because there are no modern revelations, no compelling prophets, and no unquestionable miracles. We stare at a 2000-year old book, written when superstition was substituted for science, and we must decipher God’s message via the filters of men listening to burning bushes and fiery pillars. If only poor Lazarus had come out of his tomb and written about his historic journey back from the dead, but then again, that might have been compelling!
September 2, 2010, 4:14 pmElemenope says:
Actually, I think Buzz is not far off on Nirvana. To the best of my knowledge the idea is “cessation.” Period.
The cessation of the continuity of the individual, yes. It is less clear if it is meant in the more severe cessation of essential existence sense. Depends on which Buddhist you talk to, has been my experience.
I don’t think it’s a great idea to try to equate Buddhism & Christianity since Buddhism doesn’t mention a creator or imply one.
I agree. But I’m not arguing that they are equivalent, but rather that they are compatible, and so there is no essential reason why they couldn’t have both been inspired by the same entity, as Buzz is arguing is fundamentally impossible.
September 2, 2010, 4:18 pmJ Mann says:
1) My guess after reading “Dreams from Our Fathers” is that Obama is entirely Christian as a means of cultural identification; there’s no hint of any Christian experience or belief until a minister tells him that you aren’t going to get anywhere until after you pick a Church. He goes to Trinity and is awed that he’s accepted into the community, but I still don’t get any actual Christian vibes.
2) I agree that if Obama literally believes that Christ rose from the dead on Easter morning, then he’s a Christian, but I doubt I believe it.
3) Still, who cares. As Dan Savage says every other week to “lesbians” who sleep primarily with men, if you say you’re a lesbian, you’re a lesbian.
September 2, 2010, 4:27 pmG.R. Mead says:
So, too with the widow’s mite. If Mattski were correct, the Pharisee, in his magnanimous gift which deprived him of almost nothing, would be the greater because of the size of his material contribution. But Jesus makes clear that his gift is as nothing in comparison to the gift of the poor widow whose whole heart and trust were placed elsewhere than in her material circumstances. Those who advocate progressive taxation on this basis miss the point entirely.
There could not be a more un-Marxist message when it come to material things than the Gospel. They are not evil — they are not good — they are simply nothing to be concerned about overmuch in comparison to the True concern of our existence. It is in this (and only this) that the psychological genius of Buddhism made a great and closely parallel achievement in attitude toward material things — it just could not offer anything more .. and well… in fairness, it sort of sets out in offering only nothing, so that’s hardly fair in comparison.
September 2, 2010, 4:43 pmRKF says:
Those that prooftext and adamantly set the standard for another to demonstrate to prove his worth as a follower of Christ by making the correct proclamation call to mind the Pharisee in Luke 18
September 2, 2010, 4:50 pmJeff says:
Should we really take anything a politician “writes” in their books at face value?
September 2, 2010, 4:51 pmG.R. Mead says:
Oooooh. Sorry. Thanks for playing.
The Creed was defined by same source that told you what correct Scripture is: the Church. Buzz and I, (I suspect) may charitably disagree on the working schematics of what “the Church,” fully articulated, entails in every jot and tittle — but we agree on the fundamental premises of its authority and purpose in the world, and that gave us both Scripture and Creed …
Matt 16: 18-19 — “And I say to you, that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound, even in heaven. And whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed, even in heaven.”
September 2, 2010, 4:53 pmRKF says:
Not sure I agree with you about what to take from the Widow’s Mite, but if you want to read an interesting treatment of the view of property in Marxism v. Capitalism v. a Chistian Perspective, Neibuhr gives it a very interesting balance in “Children of Darkness, Children of Light.”
September 2, 2010, 5:02 pmyankee says:
I’m not really interested in arguing about the Gospels’ teachings on progessive taxation, but Christ’s teachings on wealth are in a huge degree of tension with the capitalist system. Capitalism is based on selfishness and greed, but Jesus teaches that we are not to store up treasures on earth and that you cannot serve both God and money. Plus you have that thing about the centurion. Not being a Christian theologian-economist I can’t offer any insight into what a Christian economic system would be, but capitalism can’t possibly be it.
Then what are we to make of Revelation 20:11-15, in which God judges everyone and throws the losers into a lake of fire?
September 2, 2010, 5:07 pmwhit says:
logic fail, sorry
saying something is often misunderstood is not the same as saying it’s misunderstood/misused.
language/bible experts agree “thou shalt not kill” is properly understood as not MURDER vs not kill. that’s not subjective. it is misunderstood
here’s another widely misunderstood concept
“you can’t prove a negative”
that is incredibly misunderstood.
September 2, 2010, 5:09 pmMilwaukee says:
President Obama’s behavior is consistent with a Mohammedan hiding his true beliefs. Or somebody who is playing every side: Let the Christians think I’m Christian, let the Muslims think I’m Muslim. The only thing is that real Muslims will kill somebody who is only pretending to be Muslim. They don’t play.
The point of the Inquisition was to verify that those who said they had converted to Christianity really were Christians. Muslims would say they had converted, and when push came to shove, they would work with the Muslim armies. Or sell out the Christians they had been lying to. Either way, Obama has opened a big can of worms, and made a mess for everybody.
September 2, 2010, 5:15 pmG.R. Mead says:
Rene Girard I find very instructive, and he presents different way of understanding the equality of “sins of righteousness” and “sins of depravity” that Niebuhr addressed in that book — and Girard makes a rather large case for the profound uniqueness of Christianity among teachings of the world’s religions and philosophies.
September 2, 2010, 5:17 pmrilkefan says:
Y’all have read the Euthyphro dialogue, right?
September 2, 2010, 5:19 pmwhit says:
ack… i failed…
should be… saying something is often misunderstood is not the same as saying it’s subjective
September 2, 2010, 5:20 pmThales says:
“President Obama’s behavior is consistent with a Mohammedan hiding his true beliefs. Or somebody who is playing every side: Let the Christians think I’m Christian, let the Muslims think I’m Muslim. The only thing is that real Muslims will kill somebody who is only pretending to be Muslim. They don’t play.
Wow–immune to facts, paranoid and overgeneralizing! My fellow citizens never fail to amaze me.
September 2, 2010, 5:30 pmElemenope says:
President Obama’s behavior is consistent with a Mohammedan hiding his true beliefs.
Personally I find amusing the throwback to archaic terms. Why not go with old spellings too and call them “Mohametans” for that old time feeling?
September 2, 2010, 5:43 pmSarcastro's Little Brother says:
Yea, torture has a way of getting to the truth. Torquemada thought so. Of course, so did Beria.
September 2, 2010, 5:48 pmmuriel schwenck says:
My take on Obama’s membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church is simple: he joined that particular church because it would get him ahead in his professional and political milieu in the Chicago area. He won’t join any church now to avoid discussion – that is also a political and professional decision. It’s all about ambition, not spiritual guidance. He wouldn’t be the first person to join a church for how it would serve his secular needs as much or more than spiritual needs.
September 2, 2010, 5:49 pmI sure don’t think he is muslim, and he most likely the kind of person who only attended church on major holidays. In other words, he is ordinary.
G.R. Mead says:
Who said I was a capitalist? I would say I was a conservative libertarian distributist — if push come to shove. Scale matters, morally, economically, socially, physically. But, in any event, I am opposed to corporatism of all stripes, public AND “private” (a distinction whose underlying affinity we now begin to see). True capital concentration depends on the constructs of corporatist legal fictions. The Soviets only ever managed socialism as a consumption model and never as a production model, preferring state-corporatized capitalism, instead.
Corporatism is simply is the material aping of the functions of the Church as the Body of Christ. The insinuation of that materialist imitation impulse into the Church itself justified the Reformation. That brought about the Counter-Reformation, which ought to have healed the division. It did not because the corporate idea escaped into the avaricious minds of princelings (both Protestant and Catholic). That resulted in the development of unified nationalisms in place of the manifold personal feudal obligations it had supplanted.
Then the corporate meme escaped again into economic endeavors and business corporations were invented from rising quasi-political bodies (livery companies) in imitation of the residue of religious bodies and orders they were modelled upon. Without personal obligations and attachments to constrain their growth and duration, there was no conceptual limit to them. The State grew in concert as a mutualist — justified by the need for comparable scale to impose SOME measure of social control over the beast, and becoming a merely contending beast, in turn.
The rest of us are left to decide which monster we prefer to feed in the hope it won’t eat us instead, and might protect as matter of mere jealousy from being a snack for the other.
I don’t want to be eaten by either monster, thanks. I prefer to see them both done away with.
Too much sugar for a dime, but you asked …
September 2, 2010, 5:50 pmwhit says:
capitalism is not based on selfishness and capitalism is wholly consistent with, although it doesn’t demand – charity.
capitalism is based on the premise that it promotes more OVERALL benefit when profit is the motive and people can compete in such a marketplace. all gordon gecko quotes aside…
it’s the whole “rising tide lifts all boats’ thang.
and certainly once one builds wealth (and capitalism has the understanding that wealth is not zero sum), the same wisdom that one used to build the better mousetrap can be used to choose the better charities.
this distributed knowledge is (according to capitalism) better on average than a centralized control over charity. i think that’s true because i think people spending their own money make better decisions than people spending other people’s money.
September 2, 2010, 6:06 pmG.R. Mead says:
Yes. but I prefer the Socrates Dialogue of the Symposium
September 2, 2010, 6:08 pmleo marvin says:
A lot of wasted words here pointlessly arguing about Obama’s religion, when those words could have been put to good use pointlessly arguing about his citizenship.
September 2, 2010, 6:13 pmMorat20 says:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but not all Christians have that “Soak my life in God and Jesus” feel to them. Especially in the North and Northeast. That sort of very public, very open profession of faith and it’s constant role in your life is a more southern phenomenon, coming out of the growing evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant Churchs.
The Church I grew up in — a mainline Lutheran synod Church — you rarely saw that sort of thing. For lack of a better term, people’s faith was…quiet. In Church you worshipped, might join prayer groups or discuss your faith, but in your everyday life?
You didn’t plaster your car with Jesus Fishes or talk about how Jesus saved you. There weren’t conversion stories, or talks about how you were enlightened by the Lord. Faith was private.
So the “Christian Experience” means different things to different people, different things to different flavors of Christian.
I realize that the Southern Baptists, and the more vocal evangelicals in general have made it seem like every Christian lives a Christ-soaked life, with personal tales of how Jesus helped them, but….
Not the Church I grew up in. Not the one I occasionally attend, at my wife’s behest. It’s just not who most of them are, and I get the impression a lot of those public displays of faith are…embarassing to them.
Frankly, most of the moderate Lutherns and Methodists I know choose churches based entirely on the community involved in them, and not for the pastor or reverend’s specific beliefs. I recall my parents, for instance, deciding to travel to a much further away Lutheran church (despite the close one being virtually identical, theologically speaking) for matters entirely of community, not Christ.
Then again, they are both the ‘quiet Protestant’ types.
September 2, 2010, 6:17 pmTed says:
What!? No subtle analogy between Christianity and pornography yet? Well! It looks like I can still contribute to this thread!
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description “Christianity”; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the beliefs involved in this case is not that.
September 2, 2010, 6:21 pmrilkefan says:
vedi come storpiato è Maometto!
Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì,
fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto.
Incidentally, have you seen this?
September 2, 2010, 6:21 pmleo marvin says:
Last night Joey Chestnut ate 8 lbs of ribs in 12 minutes. If that’s not proof there’s a God, nothing is. And as far as I know, Obama’s never even mentioned Joey Chestnut.
September 2, 2010, 6:29 pmElemenope says:
Incidentally, have you seen this?
I’ve never been the biggest fan of TMBG musically, but their lyrics never fail to amuse.
vedi come storpiato è Maometto!
Dinanzi a me sen va piangendo Alì,
fesso nel volto dal mento al ciuffetto.
Being Italian-deficient as I am, I resorted to Google translate, which spat out:
see how mangled is Mohammed!
September 2, 2010, 6:30 pmFront of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin.
CJColucci says:
Most people who identify as Christians aren’t particularly good Christians, though they’re mainly all right as people. They are rarely saints, martyrs, or sages. They often neither know nor care about many of the main doctrines of whatever Christian sect they claim as their own. They may have doubts about some of the doctrines they do know and care about.(Similar things can no doubt be said about adherents of other creedal religions.) But they identify with a particular Christian community, which accepts them as one of their number.
September 2, 2010, 6:43 pmIt is an ascertainable fact whether someome claims to belong to a particular Christian community, and whether the members (or, in episcopally-organized sects, the clerical hierarchy) accept that person as such. Unless you claim to have windows into souls, those are the only ascertainable facts. On the basis of the only ascertainable facts, Obama is a Christian. Is he a good Christian? Does he know or care about whatever doctrines are important to his particular sect of Christianity? How firm is his belief in whatever doctrines he does claim to know and care about? We can speculate about that all we want, just as we can speculate on similar lines about Fred Smith or Mary Jones. Obama is as much a Christian as any number of Fred Smiths or Mary Joneses whose bona fides as a Christian we accept, and accept rightly, without question. Fred Smith or Mary Jones or Barack Obama may be lousy Christians, but Christianity as I’ve always understood it recognizes the possibility, even the damn-near inevitability, of being a lousy Christian. If Obama is a shallow, unserious Christian, which I have no opinion and little interest about, he has a lot of company, but it’s Christian company.
mattski says:
I didn’t say anything was subjective. ?!
I laid two of your statements side by side.
September 2, 2010, 6:53 pmBuzz says:
Yep, and the answer to his question is “none of the above.” God does not command something because it is right (which implies another authority extrinsic of God), nor is it right because God commands it (which would make his commands arbitrary). It is right because it comports with God’s nature. Lying is wrong because God is truth, etc.
September 2, 2010, 7:21 pmBuzz says:
Sorry for the snark. My point was your use of the word “metaphor.” If you want to say that God speaks in figurative language or phenomenological language to make himself understood to a given audience, I have no problem with that, but that is not a metaphor. When Jesus said, “I am the door …” that is a metaphor. When Genesis says, “The spirit of God hovered over the waters …” that is poetic language and perhaps metaphor, too. When God says, “Thou shalt not …” that is not metaphor.
I’m an editor by trade, and hate to see words misused.
More to your point, I don’t believe that your argument can be the case, because it would mean that God is saying there are two completely different truths, which is a violation of basic logic (law of noncontradiction). We cannot be both living in a real physical universe and an illusion at th same time. They are mutually exclusive.
September 2, 2010, 7:26 pmBuzz says:
What she said!
September 2, 2010, 7:29 pmmattski says:
Well, why do you suppose the early Christians described above chose to live communally? Sure, they were obviously not Marxists. (That was just a funny!) But they didn’t choose an individualistic life, or a life of wealth maximization. Surely that wasn’t just some coincidence?
Here is a close paraphrase from the Buddha:
I
To any interested parties, I’ve read a lot of books and this one is one of the best.
September 2, 2010, 7:37 pmmattski says:
No, no, no. Lying is wrong because you (and I and everyone else) don’t want to be lied to.
Or maybe you do!! GAK!
September 2, 2010, 7:44 pmrilkefan says:
So if Satan designed the universe, what He says goes? And He should be worshipped?
September 2, 2010, 7:48 pmElemenope says:
Sorry for the snark. My point was your use of the word “metaphor.” If you want to say that God speaks in figurative language or phenomenological language to make himself understood to a given audience…
Fair enough. I was being sloppy with my terms.
More to your point, I don’t believe that your argument can be the case, because it would mean that God is saying there are two completely different truths, which is a violation of basic logic (law of noncontradiction). We cannot be both living in a real physical universe and an illusion at the same time. They are mutually exclusive.
I disagree on two grounds.
One (slightly controversially) I would hold that the law of non-contradiction does not hold well for composite entities (like atoms, people, and universes); both/and dyads do exist on scales above simple logical outputs, as a person for example can stand both inside and outside a room by standing in the doorway and extending their limbs.
Two (much more controversially) everything at a scale above simple logical inputs can be said to be illusory to the extent that it is due to phenomenological convenience that we group undifferentiated matter into conceits such as objects and forces, and yet the basic ground of being unto which those virtual objects supervene may still itself be said to actually exist. This requires the endorsement of an ontology that argues that the entire universe is at the most basic level composed of information; to wit, bits.
September 2, 2010, 7:53 pmrilkefan says:
That’s scarily good. Maybe they check quotes against important sources (here, Dante, Inferno XXVIII) and pull up a standard translation? Being able to translate is a pretty good Turing test.
September 2, 2010, 7:54 pmBuzz says:
You and I and everyone else don’t want to pay taxes either, ergo it is wrong. In fact, people do like to be lied to all the time if it suits them. (Flattery, after all, is usually recognized as such but still desired by some.) We sometimes lie to ourselves. And there are some lies that really hurt no one, yet they are still lies.
To be sure, lying usually leads to bad consequences for someone, but it’s not hard to construct a scenario where a lie leads to good consequences. Is it therefore right?
September 2, 2010, 7:54 pmmattski says:
Your point is well taken.
I, too, have what I believe to be a fairly air-tight case for God. It merely involves adopting the following definition (which I believe closely hews to ontological rigor):
September 2, 2010, 7:57 pmBuzz says:
No, take the blue pill!
September 2, 2010, 8:03 pmElemenope says:
That’s scarily good. Maybe they check quotes against important sources (here, Dante, Inferno XXVIII) and pull up a standard translation? Being able to translate is a pretty good Turing test.
That’s what I was thinking, since I doubt the translator preferentially spits out archaisms like “doth”. I have found it interesting that Dante placed Saladin among the virtuous pagans, but screwed Muhammad and Ali.
————-
I, too, have what I believe to be a fairly air-tight case for God. It merely involves adopting the following definition (which I believe closely hews to ontological rigor):
That which cannot be described or spoken of.
That makes God into the collective absistent set of Meinong’s jungle. An odd definition, to be sure.
September 2, 2010, 8:06 pmBuzz says:
That’s precisely how Google Translate works. If it’s spiders had not happened to have found that Italian-English translation of Dante somewhere in its vast findings, you would have gotten gibberish. Still, better than Babel Fish.
September 2, 2010, 8:10 pmwhit says:
oh jeez. college philo “categorical imperative” flashback! oh noes!
September 2, 2010, 8:27 pmmattski says:
Also,
As to a lie which leads to good consequences, what would you say, Buzz? I’ll tell you what I think, that it’s OK. It’s OK because it led to good consequences and the people concerned would see that and judge it that way when all is said and done.
(As for taxes, at some level I have a mortal fear of the IRS and a dread of doing my taxes. At another level I feel good about paying my taxes and doing my part to contribute to my country. I frankly view with extreme skepticism conservative “patriots” who love their country but just don’t want to have to pay for it.)
As to “reality” vs “illusion” I heard something interesting from the Dalai Lama. He was asked if the world was just an illusion. He said, “it’s not that the world is an illusion, but rather it is like an illusion.”
What the world is, is beyond language. One thing is constant, and that is change. (Talk about non-contradiction!) Everything in this world is impermanent, which helps explain the resemblance to “illusion.”
September 2, 2010, 8:31 pmBuzz says:
Well, as long as you’ve brought it up, let’s make sure we understand the categorical imperative correctly.
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Kant did not intend it as a teleological argument. (Anyone who knows Kant shudders at the thought.) He does not means to say, “Don’t lie, because otherwise you’d want everyone to be a liar and that would result in bad things.” No, Kant, being the rigid rationalist, meant that a lie is irrational. In fact, he often used the example of the lying promise, which to Kant is the same thing as saying a square circle. A lying promise (and any statement is a form of implicit promise that you’re telling the truth) is logical contradiction, therefore we cannot will that it be a universal law.
September 2, 2010, 8:32 pmElemenope says:
Anyone who knows Kant shudders at the thought.
Anyone who knows Kant shudders at the knowledge.
September 2, 2010, 8:45 pmmattski says:
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of The Uncreated.
September 2, 2010, 8:56 pmElliot says:
Doesn’t prove it? Of course it doesn’t. Very few of the of our reasons for acting in the political arena are proved. If people sat around waiting for proof, we would never get anything done.
September 2, 2010, 10:20 pmwhit says:
oh, i KNOW what kant meant. trust me. i had it endlessly drilled into my head
September 2, 2010, 11:23 pmrpt says:
But as we have seen from the birth certificate, there is no profession of faith which will satisfy those who formed their opinion first and sought evidence later.
September 3, 2010, 12:25 amrpt says:
We did deal with this in the Reformation.
September 3, 2010, 12:34 amArthur Kirkland says:
It worked (and in some cases continues to work) for Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Ralph Reed, Ronald Reagan, Rick Santorum and just about every leader of the religious right, so why fault anyone, including some left-wingers, for emulating the habits of highly effective people?
September 3, 2010, 1:12 amArthur Kirkland says:
I thought the point of the Inquisition was to refute for all time Christians’ claims to superior morality.
September 3, 2010, 1:15 amArthur Kirkland says:
Or, in the case of warmongers, televangelists and child-abusers, maybe we can.
September 3, 2010, 1:20 amArthur Kirkland says:
Fairy tales. It’s perfectly acceptable for a person to believe them, for whatever reason, in whatever form. But it is not reasonable to expect to be taken seriously in reasoned debate if “just because” is an essential part of your argument.
September 3, 2010, 1:25 amLitigator London says:
The quotation mistranslatates the Arabic original. A better translation would be: “There is only one God and Mohammed is the messenger of God”
I remember that during the Iraq invasion some general or other attracted controversy with some Islamophobic remarks. That general was about to command troops invading a country where there is a Christian minority. The Syriac Rite is in communion with Rome, and they worship using Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. The word used for “God” in that rite is “Allah”. Likewise in Malta. Maltese is a language which has close affinity with both Arabic and Italian – and since the Roman Catholics started to use the vernacular rather than Latin, the Maltese too use “Allah” as their expression for “God”.
It’s a great pity that many of the nuttier varieties of Christian belief were actually exported to the USA from the UK – particularly the “Rapture Ready” sects – and that, in contrast to here, they are so influential. Not for nothing has Anglicanism survived as the state religion in the UK. 71% of citizens described themselves as “C of E” but only 41% say they believe in God and fewer Anglicans participate in a weekly act of worship than the 10% of the population who visit their local mosque at least one a week. Most Anglicans only ever go to church for baptisms, weddings and funerals and tend to think of the Almighty as incarnating the values of an English Gentleman. It makes England a very comfortable place for religious minorities.
That said, I can think of no more pernicious influence on politics than sectarianism and for me the misuse of religious sentiment for political ends is despicable. So, it is regrettable that the minutiae of your President’s belief are presently being exploited by the right. Still, I console myself with the thought of politicians in the 5th ditch of the eighth circle:-
Io cominciai: “O frati, i vostri mali…” ma più non dissi, ch’a l’occhio mi corse un, crucifisso in terra con tre pali.
Quando mi vide, tutto si distorse, soffiando ne la barba con sospiri; e ‘l frate Catalan, ch’a ciò s’accorsemi disse: “Quel confitto che tu miri, consigliò i Farisei che convenia porre un uom per lo popolo a’ martìri. [Dante: Inferno Canto XXIII]
“…There came to my eye one who was impaled on the ground by three stakes. When he saw me he was began to writhe blowing sighs into his beard. Friar Catalan came up to me and said, “The guy you’re looking at is he who advised the Pharisees that it was expedient to put one man to martyrdom for the good of the people.”
[Advance apologies if my translation's a bit rough]. Dick Cheney and David Addington, please note.
September 3, 2010, 7:01 am1040 says:
it wasn’t torture that worked then, it was the surprise. after all, nobody expects the spanish inquisition.
September 3, 2010, 8:51 amJohn White says:
You have a flawed view of the freedom that Christ gives us. Yes, the Apostle Paul said, “I am a slave to Christ,” but he meant he was a slave in terms of devotion, just as you and I are slaves to providing for our families. Jesus created humanity and gave us all the right to accept Him, or reject Him. While there are eternal consequences for rejecting Him, the choice is entirely ours. Even in our rejection, He still gives the right the choose to do “good” and “bad” things. An atheist or other non-Christian can obviously be a “good” person, giving time and money to the help the poor, feed the sick, and basically do as Christ commanded the Church. I’d dare say that there are many non-Christians who put many self-professed “Christians” to shame on those fronts, but the point is, WE as INDIVIDUALS have the right to do those things or not to do them. God wants us to give of ourselves of our own free will, but He doesn’t want or sanction government coercion as far as “giving.” This is the Social Justice that President Obama, Jeremiah Wright, and the rest of the “liberation theology” thugs preach, and since it doesn’t line up with Scripture, it is simply not a Christian doctrine.
September 3, 2010, 8:59 amJon Rowe says:
I have a biblical view of the freedom that the Bible speaks of. ST. Paul instructs believers who are slaves to obey their earthly masters. It doesn’t get clearer than that — the “liberty” that believers have in Christ is compatible with chattel slavery.
– Colossians 3:22.
September 3, 2010, 9:04 amJohn White says:
Jesus may not agree with these things, but He allows humanity to make its own decisions. Scripture tells us that it is not the will of God that any should perish (go to Hell), that all should come to repentance. Yet some people are still not going to repent and still wind up going to Hell, because Christ gives us the freedom to make our own way in life. He wants us to come to Him, to live for Him. He “stands at the door and knocks.” But WE have to make the decision to open the door. Why does God allow bad things to happen? Because He allows us to make our own way, and sometimes we do good, and sometimes we do bad.
September 3, 2010, 9:10 amElemenope says:
Ephesians 6:5-8
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.”
That is, slaves should serve their masters as their masters serve God. Direct analogy.
Or Colossians 3:22-25
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.”
So, slaves should be good little slaves, so that when they die God will reward them.
Or 1st Timothy (6:1) [my personal favorite]
“All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.”
So, *ahem*, nothing we say should be considered advocating for the end of slavery or slave rebellion or anything really except slaves being right where they are happily slaving away, because if it were taken that way THAT WOULD BE A PR DISASTER.
————
They went out of their way to be compatible with chattel slavery; no two ways about it.
September 3, 2010, 9:16 amBuzz says:
But “just because” wasn’t part of my argument. I provided the names of two scholars for you to consult–if you’re truly interested, which I suspect not.
September 3, 2010, 9:16 amJohn White says:
And just so everyone’s clear, Muslims do NOT have the same god as Christians and Jews. The God of Judaism and Christianity is Jehovah, and Christians believe that He came to Earth in the form of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Muslims believe in Allah, who is NOT Jehovhah.
So, to those Muslims who think they worship the same god as Jews and Christians, I say this, with all respect:
There is no God but Jesus, and John the Baptist was His prophet.
This is my personal belief, and I mean no offense by it.
September 3, 2010, 9:17 amOrenWithAnE says:
What are you talking about? One can accept the scripture and not the creed. The quote from Matthew doesn’t logically require that the Son is of one substance with the Father.
What an insult to the almighty to neglect to make use of your capacity for reason, which was his greatest gift (it might even be the essence of what it means to be made in the image of God).
It would be rather absurd for God to create a thinking being with the expectation that he would not exercise the capacity for rational thought. Indeed, it would be evidently contrary to his manifest purpose in giving us reason in the first instance.
September 3, 2010, 9:24 amJon Rowe says:
I don’t mean to be picking on you but Jews do NOT believe Jesus is God; nor do they worship a Triune God. Yes, they claim to worship the God of Abraham, but so too do the Muslims. Ergo if Muslims don’t worship the same God Christians do, neither do the Jews.
September 3, 2010, 9:33 amElemenope says:
Ergo if Muslims don’t worship the same God Christians do, neither do the Jews.
And just to make it explicit, if the God of the Jews is different from the Christian God, that’s the ball game, since Christianity depends for its authority on the provenance of the Jewish God as their own.
September 3, 2010, 9:35 amBuzz says:
You’re reading way too much into that. The very same God who said that in Isaiah 55 also said, “Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). God did create us as rational beings, and Scripture frequently calls on us to use our rational faculties and to examine the evidence. But there are some things that we are not capable of understanding, and that is what God is saying in the passage that so bothers you.
My faith is not blind faith; it is a rational, informed faith, but there are still things I cannot grasp, and that’s where the faith part comes in.
September 3, 2010, 9:49 amJohn White says:
I’m glad you brought that up. =) The first Christians (those that walked with Jesus) and most, if not all, Christians up until 325 AD, didn’t believe in or worship a “triune” god. They believed simply that Jesus was Jehovah in the flesh, as Isaiah had prophesied (Isa. 9:6). The idea of the “trinity” was a forced compromise between Christians and pagans by the Emperor Constantine, because he was tired of Christians saying there was only one God, and pagans saying there were many gods. Thus, “one is three, and three is one” was born. It was merely a way for a secular leader to try to keep the peace.
I know that Jews do not accept Jesus as God, and that is because they don’t accept Him as Messiah. But Christians do worship Jehovah as God, just as Jews do. Again, they just believe that Jehovah already came to Earth. Remember, Muslims SAY they worship the God of Abraham, but they trace their spiritual lineage to Ishmael (the son of Abraham’s adultery), whereas Jews and Christians trace theirs to Ishmael’s little brother Isaac (the son of Abraham’s obedience), and it was Isaac that God said His people would come out of, not Ishmael.
September 3, 2010, 9:52 amJam says:
Creeds are summaries. Some creeds are very good summaries but they are not Scriptures.
September 3, 2010, 10:00 amOrenWithAnE says:
If God gave us reason but forecloses its use regarding the most important questions facing our existence, then he is cruel and petty beyond words. Thankfully, I cannot conceive that any benevolent God would do such a thing.
September 3, 2010, 10:01 amJon Rowe says:
John,
So you don’t believe in the Trinity?
September 3, 2010, 10:01 amBuzz says:
Close, but not quite. There had always been an understanding of something along the line of the Trinity, clearly taught by the apostles, but it was not formalized until Nicea and even more completely about 70 years later by Athanasius. And it wasn’t a force compromise imposed by Constantine; it was a conscious effort to distinguish orthodoxy from the heresies such as Arianism. Constantine and pagans had nothing to do with it.
September 3, 2010, 10:04 amJ Mann says:
Uggh. Today’s reading in the Catholic mass is a bit from Corinthians about how we shouldn’t judge other people’s Christianity. It’s massively tempting, but consider my opinion withdrawn.
As Morat20 points out, I don’t have any way of knowing what’s in Obama’s heart. Sorry, President Obama.
September 3, 2010, 10:05 amBuzz says:
Be more precise. Where does he foreclose it and which specific “most important questions” do you have in mind?
September 3, 2010, 10:06 amJam says:
‘Obama is under no obligation of any kind to “settle” completely B.S. issues that political hack opponents like Coulter, Orly Taitz, etc. raise.’
First of all, if makes an unequivocal statement once youtube will take care of the rest. Obama can call it his testimony and be done with it. A Christian getting tired of giving his testimony?
Second, there is 1 Peter 3:15,16
September 3, 2010, 10:08 amOrenWithAnE says:
(1) Abraham could not have committed adultery, as the offense did not yet exist for some 400 years until the children of Israel left Egypt.
(2) God never disclaimed the sons of Ishmael as the children of Abraham. Issac was his heir, and father of the chosen people, but the children of Ishamel (just as those of Esau) are still Abraham’s seed.
(3) Whether or not Allah is Jehovah is sort of a silly question, at least insofar as abstract concepts are generally known by their properties — of which Jews, Christians and Muslims agree in part and disagree in part.
September 3, 2010, 10:10 amElemenope says:
A Christian getting tired of giving his testimony?
A Christian getting tired of casting pearls before swine.
September 3, 2010, 10:12 amOrenWithAnE says:
There can be no notion of heresy if you don’t accept tthat council of Bishops, none of whose lives overlapped even with those of the Apostles (let alone Jesus himself), to arrogate to themselves the authority to make definitive pronouncements about Him.
September 3, 2010, 10:14 amJam says:
Definitions of the Gospel, not exhaustive but you will get the idea:
John 6
Acts 10
1 Corinthians 15
BTW, on the life after dead issue, more from1 Corinthians 15, where the reuniting of body and spirit, the resurrection, is addressed. No way that a Christian, at least, not know this:
September 3, 2010, 10:24 amJam says:
A Christian giving his testimony to anyone who asks honestly is not casting pearls before swine, or are you just quoting somehting you know nothing of?
September 3, 2010, 10:29 amJam says:
Trinity is just a word to encapsulate a concept. The New Testament (there are passages in the Old Testament that hint to it) is explicit that God the Father testifies of His Son, the Son of God prays to the Father, that the Holy Spirit testifies of both God the Father and of the Son of God. (Jesus’ baptism is an example of this) Yet, God is one. We can aprehend the revealed nature of God but we are unable to comprehed it. We are mortals, creatures, after all.
September 3, 2010, 10:37 amJohn White says:
No, the Apostles didn’t believe in any sort of trinitarian godhead. That’s why Paul wrote that the fullness of the godhead dwells in Jesus (Col. 2:9) and not that Jesus dwells in the godhead. When Stephen was dying, he proclaimed to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” When Saul/Paul was struck down on the Damascus road, he (as a Jew, not yet a Christian), asked Jehovah, “Who are you, Lord?” Jehovah replied, “I am Jesus, who you have persecuted.” He later writes to Timothy that “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). And remember Isaiah said the “Son” would be the “Father” and “Counselor.” Jews believe that “The Lord our God is one Lord.” Most Jews reject Christianity because of the flawed theology of trinitarianism. They know that there is only ONE God, and while the doctrine of the trinity proclaims “one God in three persons,” it goes against Jewish monotheism when Jehovah says “I am the Lord, beside me there is no savior” (Isa. 43:11 and Hosea 13:4). If Jehovah is the only savior, and Jesus is the only savior, then Jehovah IS Jesus.
September 3, 2010, 10:39 amMorat20 says:
Not to mention that the concept of ‘testimony’ — especially the notion that said Christian is always up for giving it, to everyone, at the drop of a hat — is closely affiliated with a handful of evangelical Protestant faiths, based mostly in the South.
Obama’s “not Christian” because he’s not sending out the right cultural vibes to people who assume that the Christian culture they’re involved in is the only one out there.
My mother, a devout Lutheran and my mother-in-law, a devout Methodist — would ALSO fail to send out those signals. They don’t seek to publicize their faith, and view such public….glorifications…as ego-driven embarassments.
*shrug*. Then again, that’s one reason the Christianity of so many evangelicals — and especially the ones who seek public office — ring so hollow to me. It sounds like bragging, not faith. “See how much I love Christ! See how awesome I am! No one loves Jesus more than me! I’m number 1!”.
I’m an atheist now, but I was raised in a moderate, old-world style Lutheran church. I instinctively view such public displays as signs of things like a weak faith, general arrogance, or an attempt to con believers. I intellectual understand the basis of evangelical theology, and why testimonies and such are such a big deal to them, but it clashes with the cultural views of Christianity I was raised with.
It just makes me cringe.
But the other way around — they would tend to instinctively view ME (well, my mom — who has the same cultural signifiers but is Christian) as ‘going through the motions’, having a weak or non-existant faith, or practically faking it, if they considered me Christian at all. Because I (hypothetically, as it were) rather obviously don’t accept Jesus into my life the way they do.
As with everything else, it comes down to unconcious signals, cultural markers and the usual anthropology. Obama is ‘outside the tribe’, but claims to be a member of it (Christian). Something has to give, and it’s not going to be a giant mass of concious and unconcious views on what it means to be a member of the tribe they call “Christian”.
September 3, 2010, 10:40 amJam says:
To falsely testify to the nature of God and of His Son is to preach a different gospel and “let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1).
Of course, that has nothing to do with persecution or wars. It has to do with understanding of final spiritual outcome.
September 3, 2010, 10:44 amJohn White says:
But it is a flawed concept. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Ghost) are not three “persons” in the godhead. They are simply three titles held by Jesus. Just as a man may be a father, a son, and a husband. My wife’s husband and my mother’s son are not two separate persons, but just two titles I hold. I operate differently in each role (obviously! haha), but I don’t stop being my mom’s son when operating as my wife’s husband or my child’s father.
September 3, 2010, 10:48 amJam says:
Morat20: I do not totally disagree with what you wrote but a Christian does a have a testimony and, given the proper context as to not repulse, more than happy to give it. I am one not naturally given to give my testimony “on a drop of a hat.” But, given the opportunity to tell it to millions in the hope of glorifying the one I claim to follow, the one that we Christians believe holds the key to eternal salvation, I will take it.
September 3, 2010, 10:51 amJohn White says:
Right. The Apostle’s didn’t believe in or preach the trinity, so therefore……
I’m just sayin’.
September 3, 2010, 10:51 amBama 1L says:
Sure, but you need to come to terms somehow with the fact that there have been religious people who also considered themselves adherents of Marxism. To accommodate an atheist’s historical theories into their theistic worldview, they had to bend Marx’s terminology. But, look, that is Marxism! Maybe you are using “Marxism” to denote “what Marx himself thought.” Okay, fine: no Marxists are Christian because only Marx was a Marxist!
What Christian Marxists have tended to do is executed just the sleight of hand I am indicating.
With respect to metaphysical dualism, I’m afraid I was under the misapprehension that the terms primarily denoted a contest between good and evil, but I see that division into matter and spirit is probably a better meaning. (In my defense, if you look in philosophy encyclopedias, you find both.)
It would be tempting to map Hegelian-Marxist dialectic onto good v. evil, and indeed I have heard people do just that (albeit unwittingly). The model of history you get from, say, Pat Robertson is basically this: God is on one side and Satan is on the other, and history is a result of their clashes. But Augustine says not to do this, in part because you will be embarrassed when what you took to be God’s side loses.
September 3, 2010, 10:53 amJohn White says:
Amen
September 3, 2010, 10:53 amJ Mann says:
Morat20, I don’t think there’s anything particularly unnatural about speculating about Obama’s core beliefs: Does Obama actually believe that marriage is between a man and a woman? Is Hillary actually a Yankees fan?
In the first case, the answer might tell you something that would inform your voting choices. (For the record, I can’t be certain, but my guess is that Obama privately supports gay marriage and will never to anything to oppose gay marriage unless there is a substantial political cost associated with it. I could be wrong, and my opinion contradicts everything Obama has said in speeches, but it’s not a crazy question to ask, or to answer, at least tentatively.)
In the second case, the question goes mostly to curiosity, although I guess you might draw some secondary conclusions about the politician’s honesty or priorities. (This time, my guess is that Hillary is probably still a Cubs fan at heart, but that she rooted for the Yankees to show New Yorkers that she was sensitive to their problems. Now there’s a semantic question of whether that makes you a Yankees fan, and I could be wrong.)
Of course, it’s probably unchristian to speculate about another person’s christianity, but for non-christians, speculate away.
September 3, 2010, 10:55 amJam says:
JW: You are the one that is wrong. Jesus prayed to the Father, not to himself. I guess Jesus pulled a neat trick at his baptism.
Jesus’ prayer would sound totally ridiculous:
“My
September 3, 2010, 11:01 amFatherme, if it is possible, may this cup betaken fromgiven up by me. Yet not as I will, but asyoume will.”Mathew 26
Jam says:
I want to take this opportunity to Mr. Koppel and the MR. Volokh for providing a web site that allows, even, a topic like this one to be dicussed. Many thanks.
September 3, 2010, 11:03 amG.R. Mead says:
It is not the nature of relationship to material goods that I take issue with in this reading of the Gospel — but the assertion of causation.
I reject the contention that if we abandon the concept of personal property and share all goods in common we will become “good people”, be saved, achieve enlightenment or what have you. It is the fact of our condition of received redemption that is evidenced by a lack of care regarding these things and a will to share that comes about in consequence.
In short, Marxism and all socialism by degrees are just bits of materialist sympathetic magic — trying to invoke the eschaton by rattling redistributive fetishes. It doesn’t work and it is simply backwards in principle.
The Buddha’s insights were powerful and insightful as far as they go into some aspects human psychology… but they ultimately fail to transcend with joy and so do not go far enough. I like this one:
September 3, 2010, 11:05 amJohn White says:
Jesus was both God and man. He took on the flesh of humanity so that you and I could have a one-time, end-all, be-all sacrifice for our sins. I think we both know and accept this. Because he had real, living, breathing flesh from Mary, that flesh was subject to the same wants, needs, desires, and pains that your flesh and my flesh are. So the flesh obviously needed the Spirit to sustain, especially given the 40-day fast and the horrific punishment and death He sustained. When Jesus prayed, it was the flesh being made subject to the Spirit. And the baptism of Jesus, with the voice of God and the Holy Ghost descending like a dove was simply the one true God revealing Himself in three ways at one time.
The thing that strikes me is Jesus’ command to baptize. Matthew records that Jesus said baptize in the “name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Yet the Apostles baptized exclusively in the Name of Jesus. Now, did the Apostles disobey Christ, or did they understand that the NAME of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost is JESUS, and obey the command. If they disobeyed Him, then every book after St. John is bunk. If they understood and obeyed, it is obvious that they knew who Jesus was and is.
September 3, 2010, 11:15 amMorat20 says:
You might. But you are not all Christians. You are not all sects of Christianity.
That seems to be a stumbling block for some Christians. Perhaps it was that I was raised in a church that made tolerance and understanding for the variety of ways one’s understanding of Christ can come about (Lutherans were the original ‘Find Christ in your own way’ protestants, after all. Some synods took that further than others) or perhaps simply because I’ve left Christianity behind that I see it from a different angle.
Nonetheless, just because giving testimony is important to YOU doesn’t mean it’s important to all Christians. Moreover, I would think that even if I still had faith, I would be rather loathe to share such a deeply personal moment with anyone outside of immediate family, if them. Certainly not with a nation, and for such crass reasons (to me) as ‘convincing them I was Christian’ or for ‘being elected’.
Which says nothing, of course, as to whether Obama is a Christian. I take him at his word, because there is nothing else to do. At best, I might argue he acts unchristian, but Christianity acknowledges that all Christians are flawed.
Personally, I find his word quite believable on the subject and feel he acts in a Christian enough manner, as I understand the term. You might disagree. Many might disagree. But heck, I was raised Protestant. Whether he’s a “good Christian” is entirely between him and God. Even if I was still Christian, I’d have no say in the matter and it’d be presumptious of me to judge him. I take him at his word, and am astonished at the number of people who sully their own faith by attacking him this way. Good lord, like there’s not enough secular crap you can argue with.
I find the endless debate that he isn’t Christian because he hasn’t performed the right rituals (his personal testimony) in front of the right people (you, or the public), or follows the wrong politics (as if there were no Christian liberals. There were Christian communists, Christian socialists, Christian fascists, Christian theocrats….there have been Christians of every political stripe you can imagine), or simply doesn’t act like a member of your Church, to be both tedious and almost obscene.
September 3, 2010, 11:16 amAJ says:
As a retired Catholic, it is interesting to me to listen to the back-and-forth with regards to Christian doctrine and how that conforms to other religions. I’ve read Strobel’s “Case for…” series to revisit the “Readers Digest” evidence for God, faith, and Jesus. Despite the fact that the cross-examination documented in these books is fairly pedestrian, the arguments seem to bring as many questions as definitive answers. I would like to propose an honest challenge: describe the two lines of evidence that make belief in Jesus as God the most compelling to you personally. Please do not simply say “resurrection” but persuade me as to why it is probable that the resurrection occurred. Much brain power is invested into deciphering concepts such as torment and hell (or Gehenna) but the BIG question seems almost assumed. Any takers?
September 3, 2010, 11:17 amJohn White says:
Just like Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, etc. And I second JAM. Thanks for the forum to debate and discuss, even if we’ve gotten completely off the original topic!
September 3, 2010, 11:18 amRicardo says:
Suppose Obama has doubts about the afterlife, whether Jesus was the son of God, whether the resurrection and the miracle stories ever really happened or that all non-Christians go to hell.
Opinion polls show that large numbers of self-identified Christians entertain similar doubts. So if Obama is not a Christian, neither are as many as 40% of Americans even if they call themselves Christian and go to church. This would cast even more doubt on any claim that the U.S. is a “Christian nation.”
September 3, 2010, 11:19 amG.R. Mead says:
NO, one cannot. To accept the Scripture it s to accept authority, and the authority of the Scripture is not the text but the Word, and, at least within this frame of existence it is the Church (however it may be understood) that is the authoritative mediator of that Word.
But Scripture as whole does require this, and the Church holds it.
Logos is larger than reason — but eminently reasonable once you grasp the premises. Reason cannot reach what is given.
September 3, 2010, 11:21 amOrenWithAnE says:
Yes, God sent Jesus to do His work. It does not follow that they are of the same Substance.
That’s unfortunate, the Bishops at Nicea seemed like earnest professors of the faith.
September 3, 2010, 11:24 amBuzz says:
That is a heresy called modalism, and it doesn’t withstand even basic scrutiny. When Jesus was praying to the Father, whom was he praying to? When he said he’d send another, he wasn’t referring to himself … etc.
September 3, 2010, 11:25 amBuzz says:
Precisely! I see what you mean. It’s generally good advice to take anything Pat Robertson says with a very large grain of salt.
September 3, 2010, 11:28 amBuzz says:
Those would be good names for a band.
September 3, 2010, 11:31 amJohn White says:
How can something be a heresy if it was practiced by the Apostles? And look at two verses after Jesus says “another.” He emphasized that by saying “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.” (I’m assuming you’re talking about John ch. 14.) Jesus spoke at times as a man (I have no place to lay my head) and at times as God (Peace, be still). He was speaking as a man in 14:16, and as God in 14:18. He was showing the disciples, and by extension us, who He is.
September 3, 2010, 11:36 amBuzz says:
Strobel is apologetics lite. Read Gary Habermas for a full-on treatment of the subject.
September 3, 2010, 11:36 amJohn White says:
I think it’s safe to say that Pat Robertson speaks for NO Christians, be they oneness, trinitarian, Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise.
September 3, 2010, 11:38 amG.R. Mead says:
We have witnesses. Eleven men closest to him and many more who were also witnesses willingly suffered death for the truth of their testimony to this fact for the ages. It is the only evidence you have, other than faith, or will ever have.
Can you prove to me you ate breakfast six weeks ago ? Most likely only if I accept your testimony. If you knew the life of those you loved depended on them believing the truth of that event would you risk your life as assurance to them of its truth? I think you might.
If that is not true then nothing worth talking about is true.
September 3, 2010, 11:42 amG.R. Mead says:
We need a drummer — I can only sing…
September 3, 2010, 11:44 amJam says:
I, as a Christian, have to make a determination as to whether I am in communion with someone who claims to be a brother in the faith. I can categorically say that I am not in communion with Jehova’s Witnesses, Later Day Saints or Unitarians, for example.
It does not mean that I do not interact or not tolerate others.
I am aware of some of Mr. Obama’s history and opinion polls. I am skeptical of his claim to be a Christian. To be balanced, I am suspicious of “W” Bush’s too. I am not the standard to be judged by and I have no particular claim to have them present their credentials to me. After all, I can only judge the outside. And, yet I am required to make judgements.
If I ever get to meet Obama, or whomever, and the context and situation merits it, I would also talk about Christ and theology and that stuff. I have done it at a personal level with LDS priests (both Melchisedek and Aaronic) and a former Muslim (for many days, late into the night). With Jehova’s Witnesses, I think that I made it into their black list, if they have one.
September 3, 2010, 11:45 amElemenope says:
A Christian giving his testimony to anyone who asks honestly is not casting pearls before swine, or are you just quoting somehting you know nothing of?
Morat20 already covered most of the points I would make in response, but I just want to say sharply that if you believe most of the “why don’t you *prove* you’re a Christian, Obama!” demands are honestly and earnestly made, you are out of your damn mind.
September 3, 2010, 11:58 amJam says:
So, there are some who are honestly asking?
I do not care for Ms. Coulter. I cannot stand listening to her, so, I have not listened/read her in a long time.
Obama does not have to prove anything to me. But, were he to express a desire to become a member of a church (not just attend) he would most defintely would have to give a testimony for the prupose of, as best as could be determined by us who do not read the hearts of men, if he be in communion.
Again, to be a Christian does include such things as, at least, knowing about the hope of life everlasting.
Now, given that all this fuzz has been raised, I would honestly like to hear Mr. Obama’s testimony, especially, if Mr. Obama does believe in the diety of Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Of course, Mr. Obama is under no obligation to me on anything.
September 3, 2010, 12:25 pmyankee says: