Barack Obama threw his mom under the parish van on Tuesday,describing her as formlessly "spiritual" while casting himself asthe self-made convert. "I am a Christian by choice," he said at acampaign event in New Mexico this week. In 2007, he said the opposite: that he became a Christian through hismother. "My mother was a Christian from Kansas"¦I was raised bymy mother. So, I've always been a Christian," he told a voter whohad inquired about his Islamic background.
The woman at the campaign stop in New Mexico on Tuesdayasked him to explain why he is a Christian and coupled it withanother one about his support for abortion rights. The sequence ofquestions proved awkward, with the answer to the latter questionrendering his answer to the first one meaningless.
"[The] precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms ofthe kind of life that I would want to lead"”being my brothers' andsisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me," he said.He threw in a few more vague-sounding clichés and a paean toreligious relativism for good measure, and reassured the lady that"I think my public service is part of that effort to express myChristian faith."
But moments later, he said that abortion is none of hisbusiness. He is not NARAL's keeper. Bald violations of the GoldenRule are a purely private matter of no relevance to his publiclife, though he does personally think killing one's neighbor shouldbe "safe, legal, and rare."
Obama, nevertheless, seemed to welcome the first part ofthe question. Like his recent Sunday stroll to church withphotographers in tow, it gave him the chance to try and dispel thepublic's hunch that his Christian faith is phony. Perhaps Clintonwill lend Obama his well-thumbed Bible, which was often seenpeeking out of the pocket of Bill's winter coat after the Lewinskyscandal broke.
While one strains to find evidence that Christianityguides Obama's politics, it is true that politics guides hisChristianity, particularly during campaign season. Obama stillbelieves in the separation of Church and state, but he is not infavor of the separation of religious rhetoric from winning. The"Christian by choice" is more like a Christian by campaigning. Thedoctrines of Christianity are of no interest to him unless theyhappen to coincide with a political point he needs to make at agiven moment, and even at those times his treatment of them ishighly manipulative.
Obama always sounds more comfortable and enthusiastic whentalking about other people's faiths than his own, which hefrequently implies is an embarrassment in need of serious revision.He speaks of his great reverence for the Koran, for example, butthinks the Bible deserves an interpretational overhaul, to expungeall those silly parts that condemn feticide and sodomy. Islam is a"great religion," he says, but Christianity could use seriousreform under the light of modern "progress."
In The Audacity of Hope, Obama presents theplatform of the Democratic Party as far more inerrant than theBible. His discussion of religion in the book is that of the cockycollege sophomore, who holds without proof that religion is aprivate if endearing superstition while the secularist assumptionsunderlying "democratic pluralism" are infallible truths that shoulddetermine public life for all.
One would think a pol who stands at best idle and at worstsupportive while abortionists hold scalpels over the heads ofunborn children would refrain from using the story of Abraham andIsaac to marginalize the Bible. But Obama plowed ahead anyways inhis second book, using the Old Testament story to argue that theBible is subjectively meaningful but publicly dangerous.
"If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live upto God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's lifeon such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base ourpolicy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing,"Obama writes. Abraham, he continues, had his subjective"experience" with God, which may have been "true" for him, but fromthe standpoint of democratic pluralism his behavior made him a verybad citizen indeed: "it is fair to say that if any of us saw atwenty-first-century Abraham raising the knife on the roof of hisapartment building, we would call the police; we would wrestle himdown; even if we saw him lower the knife at the last minute, wewould expect the Department of Children and Family Services to takeIsaac away and charge Abraham with child abuse."
Obama sums up this ludicrous sermon on the "reason" ofsecularism and the scary caprice of religion by saying that the"best we can do is act in accordance with those things that arepossible for all of us to know." Of what thatlowest-common-denominator wisdom exactly consists, he leaves vague,but the grim consequences of this triumphant exercise of "reason"are all around us. One of its not-to-be-questioned truths is thatplunging knives into the necks of unborn children is a "matterbetween a woman and her doctor."
In the end, Abraham didn't kill Isaac. The same can't besaid for multitudes of unborn children under Obama, whose friendsat Planned Parenthood lift the knife while he uses our tax dollarsto pay for it. Abraham rejected infanticide; Obama's "reason" as astate senator in Illinois led him to waffle on banningit.
Finally, if Obama were truly a "Christian by choice," whobelieved that God the Father allowed God the Son to be crucified asa sacrifice for man's sins, he would never talk with suchsecularist crassness about Abraham's prefiguration of it.      Â
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Letter to the Editor
George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report and press critic for California Political Review.
In every way, Obama has remained a college sophomore, althoughpersonally I was never that subjective about eternal truths. Butthen I had a better upbringing than he did.
From the desk of President B. Hussein Obama:
Dear Appleby and Friends,
Although you, the great unwashed, are unworthy, I will explainto you that I, President B. Hussein Obama, am neither sophomoricnor subjective in my embrace of the precepts of Jesus ofNazareth.After a quick perusal of the New Testament (which I must admit Iread over the objections of my good friend and mentor, Rev. J.Wright) I realized that the precepts of Jesus were DirectlyApplicable to Me. Allow me to enlighten your feeble mind towhatever degree possible.First, Jesus said he was "the way, the truth and the light", whichwas doubtlessly to some extent true for his generation. Just so, I,B. Hussein Obama, am The Way, The Truth, and The Light for thisgeneration, and for all to follow once I implement my full agenda.Truly no one will come to the great father of us all, cradle tograve sustenance from a caring federal government, except throughME.Jesus also had to suffer persecution. If only he had known how muchmore I would have to endure in THIS generation. Sure, he had folksmock him some, but I have to deal with the Great Satan, FOX NEWS,and truly their demons are legion (Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly; or theThree Fools as I like to call them) and they persecute Me withoutcause or care. And how could those pathetic scribes and Phariseescompare to the rabble-filled hordes of Tea-baggers that hound meand my faithful disciples all across this nation? Truly, I ampersecuted even more than Jesus, and thus am shown to be MoreWorthy. As to that business about a cross, my good friend Rev. J.Wright assures me that part is purely apocryphal and has no realbearing on the meaning of the New Testament.Jesus was also a healer in his day. Well, he healed a few, andseemed kind of hit and miss to tell the truth. I, B. Hussein Obama,will exceed him in this regard once my marvelous health care systemis in place. Jesus may have been the great physician, I will be TheGreatest Physician, and all will love and worship me when the seemy benevolence.Of course, many of you less-enlightened "Christians" persist in themedieval superstition about Jesus being raised from the dead, whichis not only utter nonsense, but, I have been assured by my goodfriend and spiritual guide Rev. J. Wright, really has nothing to dowith the main message of the gospels. Well, I will show you a realmiracle, a sign if you must have it, for even though Rasmussen,Gallup and their ilk have blasphemed My Great Name in publishingpoor poll numbers of alleged individuals claiming to disapprove ofmy performance, soon this will reverse. My poll numbers will risefrom the grave just before election day, the people's love for mewill be universal, and my disciples shall be vindicated at theballot box. Just wait and see.Now Appleby, I give you one final admonition. You have spoken evilof The True Messiah of this age. Thus you must repent. DOWN ON YOURKNEES FOR ME! YOU AND ALL YOUR PITIFUL TEA-BAGGER FRIENDS WILL BOWBEFORE ME! PRAY THAT I WILL BE MERCIFUL TO THE IMPERTINENCE YOUHAVE SHOWN AGAINST MY MOST HOLY NAME!Meantime, have a nice day.
Your President for Life,
B. Hussein Obama
Well, I was going to call that reply an appeal to bigotry, butit's actually a display of incredible bigotry.
Your hate is showing.
Oh, I'd say it was spot on.
Bob, I've read thru a number of your responses. You claim to beCatholic and pro-life, but for some unnerving reason, I think youare probably lying just a little. Here is why: no orthodox Catholicor pro lifer would ever have been able to vote for Mr. Obama due tohis vote against Induced Infant Liability Act, which would haveprotected babies that survived late-term abortions. The only guy todo so, and he had enough committee power to squelch the vote frombeing floored. Even Hillary, who is very liberal, voted for acomparable bill when it reached the US Senate ( it passedunanimously). Obama then, to make matters worse, lied about itclaiming it did not have verbiage that would protect women enough,though it included the same stipulations both the IL and federalbill. To quote Jill Stanek, one of the women who led the fight:
"During a debate against Keyes in October 2004, Obamastated:Now, the bill that was put forward was essentially a way of gettingaround Roe vs. Wade. ... At the federal level, there was a similarbill that passed because it had an amendment saying this does notencroach on Roe vs. Wade. I would have voted for that bill.
This was a lie on two points.
First, there was no such amendment.
Second, both definitions of "born alive" were always identical.The concluding paragraph changed in the federal version. But Obama,as chairman of the committee that vetted Illinois' version in 2003,refused to allow an amendment rendering both concluding paragraphsidentical. He also refused to call the bill and killed it.
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