Not a 'Christian nation:' A 'mission field'

The U.S. is not a Christian nation agrees the leadership of National Association of Evangelicals

President Obama has taken plenty of heat in conservative Christian circles for a remark he made in 2006 in which he said that that United States was no longer “just” a Christian nation, but was religiously diverse. Now, it turns out, he has allies for that view: evangelical Christian leaders.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the National Assn. of Evangelicals said that when it surveyed selected evangelical leaders about whether the United States was a Christian nation, 68% said no.

"Christian nation" may not be a Biblically appropriate reference, the association suggested:

"Much of the world refers to America as a Christian nation, but most of our Christian leaders don't think so," said Leith Anderson, NAE President. "The Bible only uses the word 'Christian' to describe people and not countries. Even those who say America is a Christian nation admit that there are lots of non-Christians and even anti-Christian beliefs and behaviors."

America is, however, a mission field:

Evangelical leaders said that regardless of whether they would call the United States a Christian nation or not, America is fertile ground for evangelization. "America is one of the world's great mission fields that the Church has been called to reach in this generation," said George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God denomination.

Hear our cry ... my goodness, the undertones

Bloggers who fell for and did not issue flat-footed corrections regarding the blasphemously doctored "hear our prayer" video are squirming now, and Mollie Wilson O'Reilly is for the best of reasons disinclined to turn down the heat.

She writes [and we do agree]:

No one, especially not anyone who values religion and dislikes seeing it dragged through the muck of partisan politics, should have believed in and disseminated a video of health-care-reform activists “praying to Obama.” The video didn’t supposedly show “secular messianic devotion” — it showed a minister, in vestments, leading a prayer service. To believe those people were saying “Hear our cry, Obama!” was to believe that they literally regard Obama as some sort of deity. And that’s silly ... .(A lot of people said some creepy things about Sarah Palin, but if anyone ever claims to produce a video of right-wingers actually praying to her — “Hear our cry, O Palin!” — sensible people should regard it with enormous skepticism.).

Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics looks at why some religious conservatives, among them perhaps some journalists of whom we might have expected more, could have fallen for such a bizarre contrivance. He writes:

Within conservative evangelicalism, George W. Bush came to be seen as a hieratic figure--"Our Christian President," an anointed leader. The most notorious image of this conceptualization comes from the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, where youngsters are shown praying ecstatically around a cardboard cutout of Bush.
You can, then, be a religious conservative in America today who doesn't believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist but who nevertheless thinks that his more strenuous followers look at him as your own strenuous folks looked at George W. Bush. There is no evidence that religious liberals are worshiping Obama, but religious conservatives have reasons to imagine them to be doing so.

Add to Silk's observation the possibility that O'Reilly perhaps unintentionally calls to mind for us by mentioning Sarah Palin, who is not a black woman.

The congregation defamed by the video doctoring is predominately black.

There is no "card" to be played here. The circumstances say there is something more poisonous involved than straightforward gullibility of conservatives who should know better than to think so reflexively ill of liberals in general.

"Subtle racism" still deters black Catholic leadership

Catholic blogger Rocco Palmo greeted the remarks more favorably than many did former President Jimmy Carter's declaration that President Barack Obama is besieged by racism. Note that other Catholic disagreement we found was civil in this important, widely overlooked moment in our long national debate over "racism" and its effects.

Black Catholic Bishop J. Terry Steib of the Diocese of Memphis reflected Saturday on the "subtle racism" which had resulted in "a relative dearth of black Catholic leadership" in 1984, when Black Catholic bishops issued their own pastoral letter: What We Have Seen and Heard [.pdf].

Keynote speaker at a symposium marking the silver jubilee of the landmark 1984 letter, he also said that despite a quarter of a century's progress, that same racism recently caused a furor in Catholic circles over Notre Dame University's award of an honorary degree to President Barack Obama. He told the audience at Philadelphia's St. Raymond Church that other presidents have had disagreements with the positions of the Catholic Church in in war policies and capital punishment and the like, but have received honorary degrees without similar objection. That racism, he said, is doing the church ongoing harm.

Lou Baldwin of the Catholic Standard Times wrote:

It is the subtle racism that still exists which contributes to the lack of priestly vocations among young black men because "it leads to a mistrust of the Church among young black men and women," he said. "Let's acknowledge that." On the other hand, the African-American community "has contributed to some of the difficulties they are facing," Bishop Steib said, quoting Obama on the collapse of the two-parent family in the black community and the failure of many black men to live up to responsibilities to their children.

The pastoral letter being celebrated dealt less with the effects of Catholic racism than with the special gifts, culture, and values shared African American Catholics bring to their church and their path in the faith.

Yet there was no possibility of omitting racism from the discussion while also being honest for racism an overarching characteristic of American life, not of denomination.

Speaking into the gale of uproar of Obama's school speech black Southern Baptist pastor Dwight McKissic did not flinch from it either. Bob Allen of the Associated Baptist Press summarized McKissic's view:

"Whenever a black man ascends to prominence and power, the political establishment tries to demonize that person," McKissic said. He quoted the late Jerry Falwell, who in 1961 questioned "left-wing associations" of Martin Luther King. "They were accusing him of being a communist and a socialist like they accuse Barack Obama of being a communist and socialist." ... McKissic said many white preachers want God to judge America for abortion and gay marriage. McKissic said he feels strongly on both of those issues but believes that racism is also a sin, and God must judge America for that sin as well.

Peacemaker Obama separates abortion from health reform

An unfazed President Barack Obama laid down the law on the role of abortion in health-care reform, immediately after S.C. Rep. Joe Wilson's factually wrong and possibly censurable "lie" outburst.

There will be no federal funding of abortions or abolition of conscience laws.

From the transcript of Obama's presentation:

THE PRESIDENT: ... There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms -- the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You lie! (Boos.)
THE PRESIDENT: It's not true. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up -- under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.
(Applause.)

Convoluted struggle over the issue will continue, as pro-life blogger Jill Stanek demonstrated today with her argument that Obama is merely attempting to create a myth. That view isn't taking hold. Two big Catholic health care organizations were persuaded by Obama's speech, as was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Judging from the post-speech CNN poll and the Democracy Corps during-speech dial testing, so were Americans in general.

Imprecatory preaching and gun-toting

Pastor Steve Anderson of Faithful World Independent Baptist Church has attracted attention with sermons like Why I Hate Barack Obama.

There turns out to be a link between his preaching and a gun-toting parishioner, acknowledged to TPM.

Justin Elliott writes:

Chris Broughton, the man who brought an assault rifle and a handgun to the Obama event in Arizona last week, attended a fiery anti-Obama sermon the day before the event, in which Pastor Steven Anderson said he was going to "pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell", Anderson confirmed to TPMmuckraker today.

Disturbing certainly, but no gun play thus far.

Presbyterian leader calls for review of post-9/11 interrogations

The chief ecclesiastical administrator of the Presbyterian Church(USA) General Assembly has called for President Obama to create a nonpartisan commission of inquiry into the Bush administration's post-9/11 use of torture.

Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons based his April 23rd letter [.pdf] on the 217th General Assembly's declaration that Congress should:

. . . convene an investigative body with the independence, stature, and broad investigative powers of the September 11th Commission to inquire into whether any official or officer of the United States government bears direct or command responsibility for having ordered or participated in violations of law in the mistreatment of persons detained by the government of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib Prison, or elsewhere or in transporting persons into detention in nations with known records of brutality and torture; to publish its findings and, if appropriate, to recommend the appointment of a special prosecutor if one has not been previously appointed.

Parsons argues the necessity of public accountability before God and man, writing:

If those responsible are not held accountable, there is nothing beyond wishful thinking and admonitions to compel future leaders to resist the temptation to torture in times of fear or threat.

His position is rooted in the fundamental Presbyterian precept that "The Church is called to be Christ's faithful evangelist . . . engaging in the struggle to free people from sin, fear, oppression, hunger, and injustice” (Book of Order, G-3.0300c(3)(c)).

The Stated Clerk is elected for four years and it is among his responsibilities to interpret General Assembly's actions, as he has here. More generally, he is "responsible for the Office of the General Assembly, which conducts the ecclesiastical work of the church."

In keeping with its history of support of human rights, the PC(USA) is a member of the National Religious Coalition Against Torture, whose online site offers visitors the opportunity to join in the call for a commission of inquiry.

Fact-fixing CNN on Notre Dame

One myth-besotted CNN paragraph preoccupied Mollie at GetReligion.

She was addressing the story of South Bend, Indiana Roman Catholic Bishop John D’Arcy's boycott of the Notre Dame graduation ceremonies at which President Barack Obama will be honored.

Let her help you substitute legislative fact for fiction and filter spin out of science here.

Faith organizations applaud Obama's torture ban

For many who celebrate President Barack Obama's order requiring adherence to the U.S. Army Field for interrogation, the labor toward restoration of that standard was a matter of religious faith.

Faith in Public Life says it well:

For three years, religious leaders and organizations from across the faith and ideological spectrum have worked tirelessly to end America’s torture of detainees in its custody. Today, the faith community applauds President Obama’s executive orders banning torture, closing the prisons at Guantanamo Bay and secret locations, ensuring Red Cross access to all detainees, and ending extraordinary rendition. Together, we call for continuing diligence in the effort to ensure the US government never tortures again

Four religious organizations which had led the struggle against torture are listed in today's blog:

• Evangelicals for Human Rights, the leading Evangelical voice against U.S.-sponsored torture.
• National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a multi-faith coalition of more than 200 religious organizations and which includes diverse Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders.
• Rabbis for Human Rights North America, the leading voice of the Jewish community against U.S.-sponsored torture.
• Faithful America, an 80,000-member online community of people of faith.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also pushed for and applauds the ban.

There are others.

That order and the attendant move to close the Guantanamo Bay facility are prayers answered, promises kept, justice and honor restored.

We are more secure as a consequence of this good thing, not less.

Anti-aborting Krispy Kreme & the inauguration

The American Life League MySQL server choked on their "abortion donuts" news release. You cannot can now read it here, where they busted a rhetorical gusset over Krispy Kreme's offer of a "free donut of choice" to celebrate "American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day."

They and others twisted that donut marketeering into an allusion to "freedom of choice," which refers to a legal right to an abortion, and by twisting created reason to take grave offense.

Thus ALL president Judy Brown could write:

The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama's radical support for abortion on demand – including his sweeping promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as he steps in the Oval Office, Jan. 20.

Understandable. It's a big anti-abortion/pro-life week. Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry warned recently on National Public Radio that "the pro-life movement is imploding" and should begin "ratcheting up our rhetoric." ALL et al doing their part.

President Bush did his part by proclaiming Jan. 18 Sanctity of Human Life Day. Lest anyone miss the point, his proclamation concludes, "We ... encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause."

The Christian Defense Coalition (CDC) is completing it's Jan. 1-19 campaign of fasting and prayer for President-elect Obama, conducted in part because it is "deeply saddened by his policy choices concerning abortion."

The CDC will be holding an Inauguration pro-life vigil with a series of protest signs along the parade route during the Presidential Inauguration.

The Christian Defense Coalition in New Jersey and others also have plans to demonstrate their views.

Operation Rescue has already decried as unbiblical Rick Warren's role in the inauguration and is holding a variety of events associated with the January 22 anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Dubbing the inauguration "P for Perverse," Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has recommended that we "pray that God will not rain fire and brimstone down on Washington DC," and if our prayers are heard, it seems some pro-life forces will rise there with donutless effect to Terry's call.

Otherwise, remember to ask your wife not to look back as you leave D.C.

Inauguration = consecration

Inauguration is the consecration of a president-elect as high priest of the the American civil religion, argued sociologist Robert Bellah .

The Floriday Time-Union explained:

Obama will be just another American citizen Tuesday morning. Tuesday night he will be the leader of one of the most powerful nations on earth. In between, he will undergo a status transformation through a rite of initiation.

“There has to be a ritual way of placing the mantle [of authority] on the person” becoming president, [religion scholar Julie] Ingersoll said. “This is how we legitimize them.”

Rites of initiation are rituals that initiate a person or community into a new reality, Ingersoll said. Such ceremonies establish and celebrate the shedding of an older life in favor of a new life and identity.

Usually invisible to us, as Mollie of Get Religion explained recently, our civil religion has fundamental beliefs, values, holidays, and rituals that said parallel or are independent of our chosen, spiritual religions.

Obama's consecration is remarkable for the intense interweaving of both civil religion and spiritual religions, symbolizing a broader transition of allegiance and power that occurred during the election and is being steadily consolidated.

Julian E. Zelize, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, wrote recently about how during the presidential election formerly rock-solid Republican religionists changed allegiance:

Polls show that many religious Americans did not automatically move toward the right. Although most evangelicals refused to budge, younger evangelicals turned out for Obama. Catholics moved back to the Democrats and Jews and mainline Protestants voted for Obama in very high numbers.

Although the prayers and other religious ritual are a brief part of the inauguration, the underlying meaning of the breadth of clergy Obama has chosen to involve is lost on no one.

A waning alliance of the religious and political right led this country to catastrophe, and a new and it is to be greatly hoped reviving set of alliances is being forged and anointed.

How to word an inaugural prayer? With/without Jesus?

How should the Christian inaugural prayergivers speak their faith to our diverse national audience?

Jesuit priest Rev. Thomas J. Reese reminds us that:

Billy Graham did not mention Jesus in his inaugural prayers in 1989, 1993 or 1997. On the other hand, his son Franklin in 2001 ended his prayer with "We pray this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." Likewise, Kirbyjon Caldwell (Methodist) in 2001 ended his prayer with "We respectfully submit this humble prayer in the name that's above all other names, Jesus the Christ. Let all who agree say 'amen.'". Four years later, Pastor Caldwell softened it a bit but still kept Jesus: "respective of all faiths, I submit this prayer in the Name of Jesus."

Writing for Newsweek/Washington Post On Faith, he goes on to explain that:

In fact, inaugurations did not start with a prayer until 1937. Perhaps the depression focused people's minds on God. Roosevelt had a Protestant and Catholic minister pray. Truman added a Jewish Rabbi. Eisenhower added a Greek Orthodox bishop. Jimmy Carter cut it back to a Protestant and a Catholic. Ronald Reagan had only a Presbyterian for his first inauguration but by his second he had two Protestants, a Catholic and a Jew. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton had Billy Graham, with Clinton adding another Baptist in 1997.

Inclusion was one of President-elect Barack Obama's overarching campaign theme.

His approach to inaugural prayer and preaching appears to be steadfast in keeping that promise and, Reese's account suggests, to set a new historic standard.

To honor that and respect the diverse audience, Reese says:

But in a public prayer outside a Christian institution, I think Christian ministers can and should pray to God without bringing in Jesus. This does not deny Jesus. It simply invites everyone in our pluralistic society to join our prayer to the fullest extent that they can. Would Jesus mind? I don't think so.

We who favor public prayer should be the first to acknowledge that a prayer at the inauguration will not magically save our nation nor will the absence of a prayer damn us.

This morning

• Christa Brown explains what the recently replicated Milgram experiment tells us about how clerical sex abusers abuse their authority and the trust of their victims.
• Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe writes that "The Christian Science Church faces declining membership and a series of unsuccessful ventures ... .
• Dan Gilgoff at God & Country defends Rick Warren from unflattering comparisons with Billy Graham.
• Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics notes Billy Graham's struggles with the "formidable" Christian right of the 1950s.
• Kyle reports on yesterdays call to arms against the administration of President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Gary Bauer, president of American Values.
• Jonathan D. Sarna at On Faith says the only solution to the Hamas/Israel conflict is to temper inflexible religion with flexible politics.
• Holy Weblog is creeped out by the numbers of flag-waving angels on the heads of pins.

Still unresolved: Should Obama have invited Rick Warren?

Via the New York Times:

Robert Wright of Bloggingheads.tv and James Pinkerton of Fox News debate whether Barack Obama should have invited the Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.

Rick Warren revisits himself

Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren, chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to pray at his inauguration, has been misunderstood as a kind of radically insulting extremist in his views of homosexual Americans.

Warren explained exactly how he has been misunderstood in a three-part video blog to his congregation at Saddleback Community Church on Tuesday:

I have in no way ever taught that homosexuality is the same thing as a forced relationship between an adult and a child, or between siblings. I was trying to point out I'm not opposed to gays having their partnership. I'm opposed to gays using the term marriage for their relationship.

His views were still received by many as insulting, as gay rights activists like Pam Spaulding and Wayne Hudson observed. But it is clear that he really didn't intend to put homosexuality on the same moral and ethical level as pedophilia and incest.

Apparently to underline his commitment to a civil dialog, the Saddleback Web site has been rewritten to provide a gentler explanation of homosexuality as a mortal sin. Saddleback Community Church standards are unchanged, of course. Homosexuals must still overcome and cast off their homosexuality, as though it were the equivalent of alcoholism or drug addiction, in order to join his church.

I'm neither homosexual nor remarkable for my devotion to gay rights, and while I see there is a difference between his expressed views and the language in which they were being cast, I don't expect the waters to be abruptly calmed. What Warren and his church have to say to homosexuals is still "repent," not "I accept and respect you just as you are. Let's make peace."

Warren's conciliatory explanation is in my view progress toward such a dialog, but to many a homosexual ear Warren's voice still rings with something like the dulcent tones of the late Bull Connor's expositions on racial equality.

Learning to love Rick Warren

Saturday at the annual conference of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Pastor Rick Warren tried to deflect criticism by emphasizing the need for Americans in general to find common ground.

Implying that the media were somehow the cause of the controversy that has erupted around him since he was asked to read the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration, Warren said:

Let me just get this over very quickly. I love Muslims. And for the media's purpose, I happen to love gays and straights.

Wrong, as Juan Cole indicated in his blog about the same gathering:

Warren will read the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration, a choice that angered the gay community. Warren supported Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage (and forcibly divorced or 'de-married' 18,000 gay couples already married in California). Warren also has compared legalizing gay marriage to legalizing incest, pedophilia and polygamy.

Of course Prop. 8's fate is in the hands of the California Supreme Court and Warren, it seems, is very much a man in process.

Warren, for all of his bigotry, still supports something like civil unions for gay couples, and even won over Cole, who wrote:

I came away liking and looking up to Warren. In fact, I wonder whether with some work he could not be gotten to back off some of the hurtful things he has said about gays and rethink his support for Proposition 8.

Cole's detailed account, here, suggests there may be a lot more peace to be made among us. All of us.