More on Obama’s Promise to Expand Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative

Susan Jacoby at The Secularist’s Corner (Washington Post) probes more deeply into Obama’s promise to expand government funding for faith-based programs if elected president.

Jacoby’s analysis of the church’s influence in the historical civil rights movement is well worth reading. She points out:

“The civil rights movement was not animated by the cooperation of religious institutions but by the moral force of people, both religious and non-religious, who agreed that this country must address racial discrimination as its major problem.”

Read more:

Obama’s Fuzziness on the Constitutional Separation of Church and State

As a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Church, I continue to feel uneasy about Barack Obama’s notion of strengthening and embellishing the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiative when and if he is elected president.

In the days since he became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, Obama has been attempting to broaden his base beyond the extreme left, which - as lefty guru Arianna Huffington recently reminded her pick - brought him to the dance in the first place.

In the process Obama has pandered to the right on FISA, abortion rights, public campaign funding in the general election, wearing a flag pin, gun control, the death penalty, and in the little matter of the constitutional separation of church and state.

Obama has said that he found Christ at Trinity UCC in Chicago where he was a member for 20 years before the Rev. Wright controversy erupted and threatened to throw his drive to the presidency off course.

If Trinity is indeed where Obama was introduced to Christianity, he very likely learned the version offered by liberation theology. And in that case, he is left with a very naïve theological understanding that can be construed to mean that God takes sides and condones the use of violence in resolving conflicts.

Other theological perspectives teach that God leads by invitation, not by coercion, and seeks to transform, rather than destroy those who are guilty of wrongdoing - that would be the image of God modeled in scripture by Jesus.

It’s hard to determine how much Trinity UCC influenced Obama’s faith perspective. We know from the viral videos of first Rev. Wright and then Father Pfleger that politics and religion – church and state – were not separate in the venom spewing from Trinity’s pulpit. First Wright, then Pfleger, used his office to ridicule and mock Hillary Clinton, Obama’s main adversary in the Democratic primary.

As noted earlier, since first arriving at the dance on the arm of his left-wing partner, the Democratic presumptive nominee has quickly slipped out of his liberal guise to – among other flip-flops - snatch the faith-based initiative out of Dubya’s hands and use it to appeal to the evangelical crowd.

Who knows where the theologically naïve, but politically astute Obama will move next as he attempts to straddle the centerline on the road to Denver.

If you’d like to read more on this topic, I recommend James Carroll’s thoughtful column in today’s Boston Globe titled Secular Rule Benefits the Faithful, Too; and Jacques Berlinerblau’s post at On Faith (WashingtonPost/Newsweek) titled Obama’s Faith-Based Initiative: a Dissent.

Obama Panders to the Right on Faith-Based Initiative

Photo credits: Getty

Barack Obama has misrepresented himself as a professor of constitutional law, but he did lecture on the topic at the University of Chicago, and he should know better than to pander to the right by supporting a revised version of George W. Bush’s so-called “faith-based initiative.”

Posting today at On Faith (Washington Post/Newsweek), David Waters challenges Obama's position on this controversial issue and asks:

"Why is the government paying people to do God's work? And why are people doing God's work allowing their ministries to be turned into government-funded and government-regulated agencies?”

Waters continues:

“Devoted church-state separatists know this concept is fraught with constitutional complications (read The God Vote by Jacques Berlinerblau) and political temptations (read Tempting Faith by ex-Bush staffer David Kuo)."

To read Waters’ entire post, go here:

The Heads of Obama’s Base About to Explode!

Photo credits: MSNBC

Obama’s sudden metamorphosis from rock star idol of his extreme left-wing base, anchored in the blogosphere at big-name sites like Huffington Post and Daily Kos, to Mr. Flag-Waving Average Guy sauntering down the center line of the roadway to Denver has left his most dedicated supporters in disarray.

At the Huffington Post this morning, Allison Kilkenny is taking no prisoners. She leads off her piece titled ironically “Pray Yourself Better: It's The American Way!” with these words:

“Ideological contortionist, Barack Obama, marches toward his personal goal of causing one million progressives' heads to simultaneously explode.”

Kilkenny points to Kos:

“He {Obama} obtained an essential first step toward this aim when he capitulated on FISA, a move so contradictory to the core of the Progressive movement that outraged midget, Markos "Dailykos" Moulitsas, yanked a generous contribution from Obama's bony fingers as punishment for the sneaky, immoral maneuver. Moveon.org was also unhappy with Obama, all of which brings to mind the ancient expression: If You Wrong The Progressives, Protect Your Crotch.”


Kilkenny’s litany of Obama’s sellouts continues:

“These burns aren't going to heal any time soon. John Kerry turned out to be an empty shell of a candidate, but Barack Obama had real potential, or so the Progressives thought. They sunk their time and money into Obama, and as thanks, he turned around and bit the hands that fed him.

“Selling out his Progressive base on FISA was bad enough, but then Obama followed up his gradual tumble toward triangulation when he recently vowed to expand Bush's faith-based programs.

“Defenders of Obama's latest selling-out point claim churches are an essential party of American society because the institutions provide basic services like feeding the poor. Except, churches have no business substituting for the government in anti-poverty campaigns.

“If churches hold the occasional bake sale to help the Harper family pay for Little Matty's liver transplant, that's all well and good. However, any politician seriously claiming churches should substitute for government programs needs to have their head examined. It's the job of the state to care for its citizens, namely because the state is Constitutionally secular, forbidding government agents to deny care on the grounds of theological loyalty.

“In a way, asking the church to step up and care for the poor in lieu of a comprehensive, meaty welfare program is like abandoning the American post office in favor of using FedEx. It's yet another dig at the innards of the American infrastructure. It's yet another way to privatize a normal function of the government. Of course, in this case, it's selling out pro bono because the church claims to operate without the explicit intent of profit. I guess we're not counting those basket donations...

‘“Even if Obama proposed the expansion as an accessory program where the church just gets to ‘come along for the poverty ride,’ the idea is still worse than dumb, it's downright insulting. When will a progressive candidate have the courage to admit they have no business dictating moral values? When will a progressive acknowledge that triangulation brought us to this place, where the American people have no bargaining chips left? They're poor, they're losing their jobs because of triangulating land mines like NAFTA, and those jobs are not coming back. They have no health care, their food and environment are poisoned, and Barack Obama tells them to go to church and pray for a miracle.

“And that's the progressive talking. Just imaging the steaming pile of shit resting on John McCain's tongue.”

Kilkenny’s not having any of Obama’s excuses:

‘“The challenges we face today ... are simply too big for government to solve alone,’ Obama explained when confronted by foaming-at-the-mouths Progressives.

“Um, what? So let me get this straight: We pay taxes for a government unable to do its job. We elect representatives, like Barack Obama, to overhaul a broken system that has abandoned its own constituents, and instead of creating a bold, radical agenda, Obama perpetuates the status quo. Obama chooses to invest his trust in the church instead of in the political system that has invested in him this great and rare opportunity to fix an ailing society. He chooses to entrust a brothel of fairy tales with the safety of the people instead of a responsible, secular government.

“What the hell is he thinking? Unless there's a business model somewhere where "priest molestations" plus "dangerous ignorance" equals "profit" that I don't know about, this appears to be yet another grave error from the Obama camp.”

Nor is Kilkenny having any excuses from a few hangers on among progressives:

‘“More surprising than Obama selling out his progressive base is the stubbornness with which some progressives have reacted during these gradual moves toward triangulation. One such supporter explained to me, ‘You can't drive the bus without the keys,’ meaning Obama is just faking his way into the White House with these ‘moderate’ moves and bushels of ‘compromises.’

“But this kind of logic ignores Quid Pro Quo, where Wall Street lobbyists, who have sunk nearly twice as much money into Obama as they have McCain, will demand favors in exchange for their generosity.

“Obama is already in debt, but the progressives seem to think he'll experience a kind of miraculous spell of transubstantiation during his inauguration where his past corruptions will turn into delicious wine and universal health care. It ain't, as they say, gonna happen, folks. At least, it won't happen without the motivation of a seriously pissed-off base.

It should be obvious by now that believing Obama was the second coming was misguided faith on the part of progressives:

“Of course, the motivation of his pissed-off base was supposed to have been what was going to keep Obama on track in the first place. With that not working, progressives have few options left, and their trust is waning in the last great savior for the so-called progressive movement.”