Naomi Riley On The Obama Religion Controversy

Naomi Schaefer Riley, a Wall Street Journal writer, penned an insightful column in yesterday's edition entitled "Obama, His Pastor and The Democrats' Religion Problem."

After reading her article, I wonder if Obama and his fellow Democrats will ever truly realize what mistake he has made this past week and twenty years.

Of Obama's choice of a church, Mr. Riley writes,

"For starters: If you join a church, it should have something to do with your faith. The consensus now seems to be that Sen. Obama doesn't really believe all of the hateful and crazy things that Pastor Wright has been saying over the years. As Mr. Obama recounts in his memoir, he went to meet Pastor Wright because he was advised that it would "help your [community organizing] if you had a church home. . . . It doesn't matter where really." So he became a member of the largest black church in the neighborhood, thereby furthering his activism and eventually getting the votes of Trinity's 8,000 congregants. Which is fine, but such an attachment is more utilitarian than religious, and sooner or later its true character will show. We have only to remember how ridiculous it seemed when Howard Dean, in 2004, admitted to leaving the Episcopal Church because his Vermont parish refused to allow a bike path on its grounds. Religious people tend to join or leave churches because of things like theology, prayer and sermons."

If that isn't sufficiently damning, how about this later passage in Ms. Riley's editorial,

"Much has been said, in an effort to excuse the toxic content of Pastor Wright's sermons, about the ways in which his speeches are part of the "black tradition." But most black churches are Baptist, Methodist or independent. They have religious doctrines with a long history. Trinity, on the other hand, belongs to the United Church of Christ, a mostly white denomination defined almost entirely by its social-justice agenda.

This is how the Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC's (white) general minister and president, recently defended Pastor Wright: "Many of us would prefer to avoid the stark and startling language Pastor Wright used in these clips. But what was his real crime? He is condemned for using a mild 'obscenity' in reference to the United States. This week we mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Nearly 4,000 cherished Americans have been killed, countless more wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered. Where is the real obscenity here?" It's easy to see Mr. Obama's attraction to the UCC, and it doesn't have much to do with faith."

So we see that, for Obama, choice of church and 'religion' is probably not really at all similar to those choices for truly devout worshippers with a solely religious bent. He admits he chose his church for its size and political position, not really because he had a deep need for a religious experience and a home of kindred religious spirits.

At the end of her column, Ms. Riley writes,

"When Sen. Obama does get into the religious thicket, it doesn't turn out well. Here is his recent defense of his position against gay marriage but in favor of civil unions: "If people find that controversial, then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." As a reporter for the Baptist Press noted: "Obama's quote may open him up to further criticism from evangelicals, because it's a common evangelical belief that all of Scripture is inspired by God and equally authoritative."

As it turns out, Sen. Obama wasn't doing all that well among religious voters even before the recent controversy. Mrs. Clinton won 57% of the votes cast by white evangelicals in the Ohio Democratic primary, compared with Mr. Obama's 35%. For Democrats, Hillary's Methodist Youth Fellowship should be looking better and better."

In effect, Obama is no more a 'new style' politician than anybody else. He uses religion flagrantly to gain votes and the acceptance of a political base on the South Side of Chicago.

To most Americans, particularly those with any sort of religious background, this smacks of expediency, cynicism and hypocrisy. Not to mention cheapening everyone else's religious choices by insisting, in his speech this week, that his experiences are just like theirs, and vice versa.

But they aren't. I have heard just this week of two people walking out of a church service, and the congregation, permanently, over a minister's sermon which they found repugnant. One involved criticizing America as justly deserving the 9/11 attacks, the other a tirade from the pulpit of an Episcopalian church against wealth, followed shortly by a plea for more donations to sustain the rector's cushy lifestyle.

Real religious Americans vote on church and minister views with their feet and donations. They don't sit silently, with their children, for ten to twenty years, condoning racist and anti-American hate speech.

Not only does Obama probably not now, or ever will, realize his sin of hypocrisy in attempting to use religion as a mere stepping stone to political power. The liberal mainstream media which supports him continues, with Obama, to try to explain his debacle as one of race, rather than one of judgment and expedient misuse of religion for political gain.

Despite the media's fawning over his speech, including Peggy Noonan's somewhat muddle piece in today's weekend Wall Street Journal edition, this whole affair is not, per se, about race in America.

It is simply about a black candidate using religion in an attempt to curry favor with his core base of racist-leaning voters in Illinois' largest city early in his political career. Having been identified with a racist minister, Obama won't throw away his ticket to his core political support. Instead, he is crying 'victim' over race.

Personally, I don't think Americans will elect a victim, nor a racist. No matter what Obama and his mainstream media acolytes believe and maintain to the voting public.