A Pew research poll yesterday found that only 34% of Americans can correctly identify President Obama as a Christian. This number is down 17 percentage points from those who identified his Christian faith correctly during the 2008 campaign (apparently folks are forgetful about their leader’s faith?). 24% of Americans incorrectly believe Obama is Muslim. (And the Pew poll was conducted before Obama weighed in on the Park51/Cordoba House project question.  Here is a similar TIME poll.)

Before I go further, let me follow Amy Sullivan’s lead (here) and note what must be said at this point. Sullivan writes:

Let me pause for a moment here to say that it is of course not a smear to call someone a Muslim. It is, however, obnoxious to say someone is a member of a religious faith when he’s not–and to insist that he is not a member of the tradition he does claim. It would also be foolish and naive to pretend that conservatives who call Obama a Muslim are doing it in a neutral way and that their intention is not to raise questions about his “otherness.”

By the way, for those who actually want to think deeply on Obama’s faith, pick up a copy of The Faith of Barack Obama by Stephen Mansfield.   But here’s what this outrageous poll data causes me to ponder:

First, I’m struck by the fact that though I interact with hundreds of people personally and professionally, I’d be hard-pressed to name more than a handful who might believe President Obama is Muslim. But, according to the poll, 1 in 4 Americans believe so. This reminds me of my sheltered nature, of the cliquishness of American life, and my self-selected friends and relations. Additionally, since Obama’s faith practically never comes up in regular conversation, I wonder if perhaps I’m just way off presuming my friends and relations have accurate understandings of Obama’s faith.

Second, who knows how really to delve into such things via a poll, but I wonder how much the faith poll numbers would correspond to more overt racism if pollsters asked the right question. My guess is that many of those who believe Obama is Muslim might also be very uncomfortable with those of other faiths and those of other skin colors in general.  (For example, the TIME poll finds, “Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President.”)  Perhaps it’s the case that maligning Islam is somehow culturally okay, while overtly using racial epithets crosses a time-honored line.

Finally, I profoundly disagree with Sullivan’s statement in her analysis that, “In a perfect world, nobody would give a hoot whether the president went to church or said grace before meals or ever uttered one word publicly about his religious beliefs.” Religious belief is hugely important to me, as is any moral underpinnings or claims about the end times, or belief in divine interventionism, or God’s loving nature, or God’s non-existence, etc.. I will happily vote for candidates of many religious faiths (or none), but I will always seek to do so considering a candidate’s faith, thoughtfulness, and positions on the issues. I appreciate Sullivan’s reporting, but I’ll go to my grave professing that faith matters matter. And that’s what’s awesome about the US and the First Amendment — and very scary about this poll data.

Update: Amy Sullivan reflects a bit more on 8/20/10 in “Are One-Quarter of Americans Freakin’ Morons”

Creative Commons image by Alex Johnson

Thanks to Mary and TellingSecrets, I paste below Bishop Gene Robinson’s prayer at the inaugural festivities yesterday. He did, as he said, and prayed to the “God of our many understandings.” I respect Bishop Robinson for many a personal trait and a theological stance, but I differ with him on this decision.

From my point of view, Bishop Robinson, an Episcopal priest, was asked to pray because of who is he is: a religious figure, yes, but one particularly of the Episcopal tradition. This tradition brings with it certain theological claims, like, um, “Jesus is Lord” and “God is Triune.” It’s a tradition that leaves plenty of room for the Spirit to reveal to us more knowledge of God and God’s work in the world, but it’s a tradition that has clear creeds, makes clear claims about God who we understand in a particular way.

I’m from the school of thought — and, I confess, at a seminary that tends to lean towards this school — that inter-religious dialogue is cheapened when we try to make God into a common denominator like “God of our many understandings.” Instead, coming to the inter-religious table knowing much about your own faith, making clear claims about the God in whom you believe, I think, leads to richer, deeper, more honest conversation. Instead of some fluffy unknown unrevealed God, we can address the God we know and understand, tell others about that God, and our faith may be deepened and our knowledge expanded by the conversations that follow.

On his blog, Robinson writes, “I have received a lot of critical email since announcing that my prayer would not be overtly or aggressively Christian, as most of the inaugural prayers of the last 30 years have been. My plan is to address this prayer to the “God of our many understandings,” acknowledging that no one Christian denomination nor no one faith tradition knows all there is to know about God. Each of us is privy to a piece of God, as experienced in our faith tradition. My hope is to pray a prayer that ALL people of faith can join me in.”

What if my “understanding of God” is that God only helps those who help themselves, or hates people with blue eyes, or damns those who fail to recycle? Did Bishop Robinson lead me in prayer too? I guess so.

I don’t understand how one can have such an open-ended address to God, and then pray for so many particular things. It seems to me that if one is consistent about such a stance one would need to just leave a time of silence for everyone to lift up their own particular understandings of what the prayer should include.  As soon as you start to make everyone happy in a prayer, or invite all to join, you’re surely leaving out others by the very nature of that invitation in the first place.

I’ll put the full prayer up below. I’ll definitely give him props for the line, “our new president is a human being, not a messiah” and the two-fold nature of the prayer for big-picture justice and then for Obama in particular is nice. Inter-religious stuff is HARD to do with integrity and I’m totally not looking forward to my first experiences. But, when I have them, I’ll bring to the table who I am, what I believe in, and testify to the God in whom I trust.

Bishop Gene Robinson’s Prayer:
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

And following it.

And following….

We walked all the way down a long hallway and turned, only to walk a long way down the next hallway.  At the end of that we ended up in an old warehouse-feeling part of the building and the line just kept going.

Here’s some pictures.

It was a great civic moment, or hour actually.  People of all races and socio-economic classes.  Gay couples and straight.  Moms with babies and single men who had never voted before.

When we finally got to the end of the line we arrived at the room with about 30 voting machines.  I popped in my electronic card and used the (silly) touchscreen voting machine.  My vote went off into the ether.  I sure hope it was counted because I don’t have any proof that it was made.

But I’ll remember that line forever.  Yes it should be shorter and easier to vote.  But, who knows, maybe one day I’ll tell my grandchildren about the day when I helped elect a remarkable leader, a true patriot, a paradigm-changing figure, the first black President of the United States.

I wonder.

I wonder if Michelle Bachmann, R Minn, really does think a significant portion of the US congress is “anti-American.”

I wonder if McCain regrets the tenor of his recent rallies.

I wonder why Palin is so narrow in her definition of true Americans.

I wonder if McCain/Palin would rather win at all costs, or have every American aware of Obama’s Christian faith and patriotism.

I wonder why “spreading the wealth” is socialist if that’s what all taxes do in the first place.

I wonder why we’re so scared of socialists.

I wonder what America would look like if we had more patriots like Colin Powell who served two Bush presidents and said,

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I wonder if we can blame things on “silly season” in politics, or if this season just brings out what we already think but usually don’t say.

I wonder why we don’t have more insightful discussions of church and politics like Jan Edminston’s.

I wonder who benefits the US more: a school teacher on the prairie or another DC lawyer.

I wonder if it might just be more patriotic to plant vegetables in our front yards than buy chicken raised in California shipped to China for packaging then shipped back to California to be sent to grocery stores on the east coast.

I wonder how many us will vote.

I wonder.

image by salingpusa

This week’s non-debate debate about energy policy has been fascinating. Neither candidate–except Nader and Gore–really excites me about energy. Here’s why…

I like high gas prices. I don’t want prices to come down, I want them to stay between $4-5 a gallon. Americans drove 3% less these last few months compared to last year, a positive move towards restoring God’s creation. High gas prices will continue this trend. High gas prices give auto makers incentive to make smaller more fuel-efficient cars because they cause consumers to buy them. High gas prices are good.

But, high gas prices hurt the poor, so…. This isn’t rocket science, it’s good policy: as demand decreases and prices fall, I’d support taxes to keep gas prices in the $4-5 range. This will keep consumers making smart choices–for our economy and for creation. Let’s invest the money from these taxes in public transport, in neighborhood development that brings stores within walking distance, in incentives for alternative energy. But this still hurts the poor, I know. So if you make under a certain amount, say family household income of $80k, you get a check at the end of the year that will reimburse you for the difference of said tax. Folks will end up not being out of pocket for gas, but they also end up making better oil and energy choices throughout the year.

McCain’s (and Hillary’s) gas tax holiday is bunk. It would only get folks back about $30 a year. That’s not a policy, it’s a pander.

Drilling offshore is silly because full production takes 10 years to develop, and even then the amount of oil we’ll drill offshore doesn’t amount to anything compared to the rise in consumption by India and China.

But we need to get “American oil” you say? Well, that’s silly too. It’s a world market. We don’t buy “American oil,” oil companies drill oil from one giant pool of oil, and sell it wherever they can make the most profit. If “American oil” can be accessed cheaply, companies will simply ship it to the market with the highest price.

Here’s the big issue: oil production will peak, no matter what, in my lifetime. Estimates differ, but let’s say it’ll peak in the next 20-50 years. If we’re not weaned off the black stuff by then, we will only have ourselves to blame.

And don’t even let me start on ethanol. It not only takes more energy to make it than it supplies, but it also majorly screws up the world food market. I know farmers are suffering under high oil prices, but subsidies for ethanol only make matters worse.  Ethanol subsidies are an enormous waste of resources.

What gets me about the oil crisis, is that it’s not like we didn’t see this coming. Remember those solar panels on the roof of the Carter White House? We had the right idea in the 70s, then got lazy and backed off. Stupid.

I don’t hear a truly reasonable comprehensive plan from either McCain or Obama, and certainly not one that embraces the gravity of the crisis. If–as both candidates have now said–increasing our average tire pressure will make a significant difference, then where’s the national plan to have free air pumps at every gas station, court house, and public park? I appreciate the fact that the Democratic Convention will be carbon neutral, but it’s a drop in the bucket (or “oil drum”).

My blood pressure is rising. Rant ends here.

Update:  Flush With Energy by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN in today’s Times addresses the 70s issues and sounds pretty sensible to me.

Pastor Dan does well, as per usual, with his heartfelt UCC and Obama breakup comments here.

Carol over at Tribal Church and I are having a conversation regarding Jeremiah Wright. My introduction to the series is in this post. My first question to Carol was:

With our current media situation, can we in America have a responsible public conversation on race, religion, and politics or are we destined to the lowest common denominator of ten-second sound-bites?

Her answer found here, follows:

I was serving a small church in Cajun Louisiana. Think The Apostle, Robert Duvall’s masterpiece from eleven years ago, and you’ll know where I was. It was literally filmed down the road from my church.

When I was doing some community organizing, I made friends with Prophetess Perot. She asked me to preach at her revival at the House of Prayer, and I (of course) accepted.

I had no idea what was in store when I drove up to the tiny clapboard house. The building had been transported from a plantation and its walls were soaked with history. Houses of Prayer were the one place on the plantation where slaves met, without any oversight or fear of their owners.

This House of Prayer was where the Bible was read and preached, where revolutions were planned, where hope was reignited. Within those walls, in that safe place, men and women told their stories. They could cry about the beatings, they could whisper the truth about the rapes. The sanctuary was a refuge in every sense of the word.

Upon entering, I found out that the walls were now filled with posters, with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. written on them, next to the words of the biblical prophets, Elijah and Jeremiah. I read them as the heat from the room enclosed on me.

The series of services was not a revival in the sense that they were out to save anybody. It was a week to revive the pastor. All the speakers and singers were there to encourage the congregation and the prophetess in her work. The congregation was made up mostly of women, and when we talked, I found out that most of them were professional cleaners.

The deacons had starched white coats on. They lined the walls to make sure everyone was helped. I was thankful that I wore a dress, and my husband was in a suit, otherwise we would have felt quite out of place.

We began the service with singing praise choruses and spirituals. And there’s so much I could write about-how the prophetess entered twenty minutes late and was seated in a large wicker chair, how the singers were a family act who traveled about from revival to revival-but I need to get to the point, so I’ll skip all that and tell you about the deaconess who got up to pray.

She was beautiful. Thin, black, with perfect posture. I was about 27 at the time, and she was the same age. When she opened her mouth, there was some sort of power behind her words. A force I can’t explain. But, the preachers reading this know what I’m talking about. She prayed through every part of her body, that her mouth, and nose, and ears, and hands, and feet would all serve God. It was poetry. It’s a prayer form that I’ve tried to copy a hundred times since I first heard it. Except for one part. When she referred to God… at first I didn’t understand it… I couldn’t figure out what she was saying.

And then it hit me. She was saying, “Massah.”

Oh no. It can’t be. I thought. And she said it again. And again. She’s my age. She grew up in the same country that I did. She’s smart. This can’t be.

I had this gut-wrenching urge to plead with her, “You can’t do that! You cannot refer to God as your Master. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. You are God’s daughter. You are not God’s slave.”

I recall the incident frequently in my mind. And sometimes I still wish that I had been brave enough. But I wasn’t. It was not my place to enter into that sacred house and begin telling her what to do. To tell her how to talk to God. I didn’t think myself as a descendant of slave owners, but she knew that she was a descendent of slaves.

That history was in the walls, and it was in her veins. And she would pray to God, who was her only Master, in the way that she wanted. It was not my turn to speak. It was my turn to listen, and to pray with her.

There was so much in those walls. We were sitting in a context of history that I could never understand.

And, so to answer the question, I’d say that we cannot have a responsible discussion on race in America in the media, by extrapolating sensational sound bites and listening to them over and over again. It’s not just the full context of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons that we are missing. We are missing a beautiful and complicated history, an entire tradition of people who could speak freely in their sanctuaries without the fear of censure.

I do not agree with Jeremiah Wright. I am saddened by the damage he has done to Barack Obama’s campaign. I shudder at what he has said about AIDS. I fear when he says, “God damn America.” There’s just something deep within me that worries that God will hear him. That God will honor his plea. I watch the National Press Club clips and shake my head. Rev. Wright has been flippant he should have been serious.

But I also acknowledge he’s speaking in a context that I will never understand, one that pulses in this country, and goes far beyond the context of the sermon. It is a tradition that began in those houses of prayer. In the one place where people could speak freely. Where no one could tell them what they ought to say, and how they ought to pray, and how they ought to sing, and how they ought to talk to God.

And so, it is again my place to listen. Not only to Wright’s sermons, but to the vital tradition of liberation that scares me and gives me hope.

We cannot have a responsible conversation in the media. But we can have it in our spiritual communities. And the words of Rev. Wright have stirred up that opportunity.

So, Adam, let me ask you, what are the theological implications of Wright’s words?

Thanks for the fantastic post, Carol.  I’ll think on these things, and post right back at you.

So Carol over at Tribal Church and I have both been thinking about blogging and Jeremiah Wright, but stymied over the best blogging approach. Now that the furor had died down a bit, we’ve agreed to have a bit of a blogging back and forth, asking each other probing questions and reflecting with our brilliant wit – ok, well at least the first part. I’ll give my overall impression of Wright, and then the questions.

In many ways, Wright speaks out of a theological perspective that speaks to me. Jesus delivered people from oppression. He did not lead folks to financial prosperity, nor to easy answers, nor to cuddle up to corrupt systems. Jeremiah Wright gets this, so my initial thoughts on the controversy were that Wright was being slammed unfairly by the media in a slow news week.

Did you notice how seldom the media refers to him as “The Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright?” Did you notice how one sermon was taken out of context without regard for the rest of Wright’s ministry? Did you notice how his service in the US Marines is seldom mentioned? These complexities make it easier for the media to portray Wright stereotypically rather than with complexity. The stereotype was one with which many Americans have great difficulty: un-educated rabble-rousing preacher, anti-American, angry black man.

Anyone who knows anything about Wright’s church knows this stereotype is a sad indictment of religious, racial, and political dialog in America.

So when Wright went public a few weeks ago, initially I was cautiously optimistic that he would transcend these stereotypes and heighten the level of conversation. I watched Bill Moyers interview, and thought this might be the case. I watched the Detroit NAACP speech, and got a bit worried. I watched the National Press Corps presentation – especially the Q and A – and knew the moral high ground was lost, as was any salvageable credibility, forever.

So here’s my first question to Carol:

With our current media situation, can we in America have a responsible public conversation on race, religion, and politics or are we destined to the lowest common denominator of ten-second sound-bites?

image by mishahu 

If you have six minutes, Moyers’ sermonizing below is just first-rate.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvnMK1d9xE0]

If Obama knew of Wright’s controversial nature, why didn’t he leave the church?

This question reveals a pretty sad understanding of church: an organization one joins or leaves solely because of one preacher (or one sermon). The church is not a social club to boycott if the Word raises hackles. The church is a community of believers–the body of Christ–called together by God and seeking to worship and serve.

Membership in a particular congregation should be about that congregation as a whole–the relationships with other members, service in the community, opportunities for spiritual growth and discipleship, proclamation of the gospel in word and deeds–and overall, focused on worship and serving the Triune God.

It’s always good for ministers to remember that the particular church in which they serve was there before a certain minister arrived, and will be there following.

How could Wight say, “God damn America”?

News flash: Christianity isn’t politically correct, or even politically sensitive. I wish God would damn America’s sins–of homelessness and poverty, of unjustified war and privileging the rich. Turns out the gospel does not equal America. Of course, as a policy we’d be better seeking ways to further God’s kingdom rather than dole out God’s damnings. In a Wright-re-done Lincoln’s famous quote, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is damning America; my greatest concern is that I might be damning only what God would damn.”

Of course, the more positive and more helpful way to put Wright’s phrase “not God bless America but God damn America” is David LaMotte’s “God bless the people of every nation.” But that’s for another sermon.

Update: Check out Jim’s post today here.  Similar stuff, but another perspective.

Barack Obama is the candidate who embodies eschatology; his campaign is one of eschatological hope.

Now I could describe how Obama’s policy positions most clearly match mine, but that’d be boring and folks everywhere will be blogging about such things. Instead, here’s why Obama is the eschatological candidate.

I know this might seem a bit of a stretch. Obama doesn’t talk about the end times. He’s made no indication as to when he considers Christ to be returning. He hasn’t weighed in on how he reads the book of Revelation. But, in my estimation, Obama does function with a clear eschatological underpinnings.

To understand we must separate the strict definition of eschatology from how Christians live eschatologically. My working definition of eschatology is something like, “a theological doctrine having to do with end things; end things as both, 1) the actual final ending of the world and its inhabitants, and 2) final goal or purpose of all things” (credit to George Stroup for that definition).

In mainline churches at least, recent times have seen a dearth of eschatological consideration. We don’t want to be construed as those evangelicals who might read the Left Behind series a bit too carefully. We don’t want to be seen as preparing for a specific time or place of Christ’s return. So, for fear of mislabeling, we don’t talk about Christ’s return enough.

Eschatology is important because it focuses on hope–hope for Christ’s return, hope for the salvation of our individual selves and the renewal of all creation, hope for the fulfillment of God’s prophesies of peace and justice.

Now this hope doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and simply wait for all to be peaches and puppy dogs. Rather, we must work, with this hopeful perspective, for justice here and now. As Cullmann wrote years ago, we at the same time focus on the already as well as the not yet of Christ’s coming. We celebrate that Christ has already come, and we wait in hope as the final redemption has not yet arrived. Now we must focus on hopeful active participation for Christ’s return.

Enter Obama. A republican strategist recently described him as “a walking, talking, hope machine.” His logo looks like a rainbow which, for Christians, reminds us of God’s covenant to Noah (or perhaps suggests Obama is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow). His website sells a shirt reading, “Got Hope?” and a bracelet decorated with the word “HOPE” and the rainbow logo. His grand book is entitled, “The Audacity of Hope” and Obama’s Iowa caucus victory speech contained the word “hope” fourteen times.

In this speech, Obama claimed that his Iowa victory will be remembered as the time when Americans remembered again what hope is. He then described hope in several ways, concluding,

Hope-hope-is what led me here today – with a father from Kenya; a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

Now for slightly more fancy analysis. In his chapter on eschatology in his introduction to Christian theology entitled Faith Seeking Understanding, Dan Migliore goes to great lengths to show how the “doctrine of the last things” functions in every aspect of Christian theology. Eschatology is not a peripheral doctrine, but one so central that it connects every doctrine together. Hope, then, is integral to every Christian doctrine. For this white mainline contemporary theologian, hope is key.

Interestingly, the black theologian James Cone wrote over 30 years ago in a different but not discordant tone. Cone largely concurs with Bosch who affirms, “eschatology is related to action and change.” For Cone, writing in a time of overt oppression of his community, eschatological hope moves him to trumpet against accepting the present as acceptable. For this black theology writing 30+ years ago, hope necessitates action.

Barack Obama’s message is an inspiring and prophetic combination of Migliore and Cone–establishment and near-militant theologians–that skillfully mixes the message of Christianity with an American political platform.

So I voted for Obama, the eschatological candidate, for his message of hope affirms what I believe as a Christian.