If one searches for Obama’s position on the separation of church and state, one is repeatedly directed to a speech given by Obama at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America. A video of a portion of the speech is posted several times on youtube and it is described by one poster this way:
Barack Obama discusses the importance of The Separation of Church and State in a pluralistic society.
Another poster says this:
Obama explains the importance of church-state separation in a variety of ways. What it comes down to is; In a diverse democratic society, any proposed policy must justify itself via the benefits we ALL see, rather than via arguments that only hold true to people who have one certain religious worldview.
Neither is correct and Obama’s speech was not about separation of church and state- but rather how government can take advantage of religion. He pays lip service to the separation of church and state but not so much about keeping religion out of politics as it was keeping politics out of religion:
For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.
But then makes the argument that religion must bow to government:
This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Thus it ought to surprise no one that Barack Obama’s policy has been to intermingle church and state when it to his advantage to do so. He’s on a Mission from God.
During his run for the Presidency Barack Obama gave a campaign speech in the United Church of Christ’s General Synod in Hartford Ct in June of 2007.
The speech caught the interest of the IRS:
NEW YORK — The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ over a speech Sen. Barack Obama gave at its national meeting last year after he became a candidate for president, the denomination said Tuesday.
Obama, an Illinois Democrat, belongs to the 1.2 million-member Protestant group through his Chicago congregation.
In a letter the denomination received Monday, the IRS said “reasonable belief exists” that the circumstances surrounding the speech violated restrictions on political activity for tax-exempt organizations. The denomination has denied any wrongdoing.
The week before the Hartford speech Obama told an Iowa audience:
‘‘My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work,’’
And again in Kentucky the following year:
On the rear of the flyer is a little homily about how Obama visited a local church one Sunday. That day Obama felt a beckoning of the Spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his life.
On Father’s Day of 2008 Obama again campaigned in a church:
Obama headed to church this Father’s Day Sunday in his hometown of Chicago — the first time he’s been to church since he severed relations with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The Obama family attended services at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, one of the city’s largest African American congregations and just six and a half miles from Obama’s former place of worship, Trinity Church of Christ.
Longtime church leader Bishop Arthur Brazier greeted his “good friend” warmly and touchingly noted, “[Obama] has done something [in] this country that I never thought I would live to see.” He continued, “I am filled with emotion because I have lived through some very tough times in America. But the America today is not the America of yesteryear. And I don’t think, I don’t think it behooves us well to keep talking about the past. The Apostle Paul said forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out to the things that are before.”
At the end of his speech, Obama thanked Apostolic for their hospitality and urged them to pray for him and for Michelle. The senator left the sanctuary before the actual sermon to be delivered by Bishop Brazier’s son Byron Brazier and didn’t get a chance to hear Apostolic’s prayer for him.
And thus it ought to come as no surprise that Valerie Jarrett recently took to the pulpit to campaign for Obama.
On the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to give a political speech, in support of her boss (Barack Obama) and congressional Democrats
“We all sleep a little better at night knowing Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants are not plotting a terrorist attack against the United States,” she said, eliciting applause from the crowd.
There was also a brief jab at Republicans.
“Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because congress, well let me be specific, because the Republicans in congress …”
Before she could finish her sentence, people in the congregation were laughing, and applauding.
And to top it off, the church held a voter registration following her political speech.
It was suggested that Jarrett’s speech might be in violation of IRS law:
Valerie Jarrett’s partisan speech at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church may have violated the IRS tax rules for churches’ political activities, said a prominent free speech attorney.
“It is problematic under current regulations,” said Erik Stanley, a senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is campaigning to roll back IRS curbs on believers’ speech.
And that’s before the so-called separation of church and state. Obama is abusing religion in the name of politics, not that that matters.
After all, Obama is doing the Lord’s work.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
It’s only fairly recently that atheist gained their freedom of speech—the predominant milestone probably being Madeleine Murray-O’Hare, who was mysteriously killed. The closest thing to prominent atheists were figures like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington—who were deists, rather that theists (most common among today’s Christian adherents). Also, non-believers has increased their number with the increase in information and education in the 21st century.
Government IS Barry’s religion. In particular, “totalitarian” government – as the term was originally invented by Mussolini, to mean literally totally embedded in every aspect of life.
d(^_^)b
http://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/
“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Nice non sequitur. Washington and Jefferson were capable leaders and did not hate this country. That’s all they needed to be. Obama has neither of those attributes.
Our first generation of leaders were a product of the Enlightenment, and created the Constitution. Obama and his crowd lust for a new dark age and want to dismantle the Constitution.
To my mind, that’s a clear statement that embodies a fundamental American principle.
Some time back before he became president, Obama was interviewed by a Christian minister.
That interview might still be available on line.
But the part of it that stood out to me was that Obama sort of stunned the minister when Obama explained how and to whom he prays.
He said he considers talking with himself to constitute prayer!
He lays out an issue and then he figures out his strategy.
That is Obama’s idea of prayer.
The minister tried in vain to get Obama to add God into the picture,
No joy.
This lines up with what a White House Insider noted about both the Obamas and Valerie Jarrett.
@Greg:
Yeah. I wonder who wrote it. Does Obama follow it? No. None of the Democrats’/Progressives’ big government schemes are subject to reason. How can they be when they’re not even subject to discussion?
-“I won.”
-“We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”
-Closed-door writing of major bills.
-“You oppose borrowing 40% of the Federal budget because you’re racists and you want Americans to starve.”
-“The science is settled. You are anthropogenic global warming deniers – as evil as holocaust deniers. Coal and oil company executives should be put on trial for genocide.”
-“90% of firearms recovered at Mexican crime scenes come from the U.S.” (Actual figure: 17%).
-Secretly sending guns to lethal Mexican criminal gangs to try and make the 90% figure come true.
———————————————————
Remember Greggie? Remember? I don’t think they really care what anybody thinks. The message has been “do it or else.” It’s been “shut up, that’s why.”
Nan G, White House Insider has some ripping yarns to tell, but it’s completely undocumented and it’s too good to be true.
Obama: I’m on a mission from God. No, no, no. It should read I’m on a mission and I am God! When will the right give him the credit he thinks he deserves?
He is doing the lords work alright. The question is which lord? Many have called the ‘Prince of the power of the air’ lord and have done exceedingly well by so doing. At some point however; the devil will have his due.
@CharlieGee:
Which lord, indeed.
Speaking of being on a mission from God….
Remember just after 9-11-01 when a Muslim man from Texas was written about how hard it was for him to obtain a pilot’s license after 9-11 in the USA?
Well, he was Moeed Abdul Salam.
And Moeed Abdul Salam blew himself up in Pakistan!
This happened in Gulistane Jauhar, a middle-class area of Karachi.
On the night he died, Salam led evening prayers at the small mosque on the ground floor of the apartment building.
“His Koranic recitation was very good,” said Karim Baloch, who prayed behind him that night. “It was like that of an Arab.”
Salam rejected his Texas relatives’ moderate faith and comfortable life, choosing instead a path that led him to work for al-Qaida.
He had posted an image of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American al-Qaida leader on his FaceBook page.
He had also recently linked to a document praising al-Awlaki martyrdom and to a message urging Muslims to rejoice “in this time when you see the mujahideen all over the world victorious.”
After his death, the Global Islamic Media Forum, a propaganda group for al-Qaida and its allies, hailed Salam as a martyr, explaining in an online posting that he had overseen a unit that produced propaganda in Urdu and other South Asian languages.
AP is mystified.
They opine (like Obama) that only POVERTY causes a person to become a radical Islamist.
I thought he was a Muslim, no a Kenyan, no a member of Rev. Wright’s church. Which is it now, idiots?
@liberalmann:
We’re not responsible for what you thought. The correct thing to think is #3, that Obama was a member of Reverend Wright’s racist, paranoid, pretend-church/get-rich-quick-scheme. Obama’s father was a Kenyan communist, but Obama is not a Kenyan. And Obama is certainly not religious, Islamic or otherwise – it’s just an act. You got it wrong two out of three. That’s a success rate of 33%. You suck.
But you can redeem yourself. Quick extra credit quiz Greg:
1. Did the US government create AIDS in a lab to kill brown people?
2. Do you want God to damn the United States?
3. If a man sits for 20 years listening to serm0ns by a preacher who says lots of things like items 1 and 2, do you want him in the most powerful job in the government?
@Greg:
Mr. Obama apparently fails to realize that “religiously-motivated” people are the only kind of people there are. Dictionary.com, for example, defines religion as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.” Each of us is living out of, and based on, some set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe.
In the passage above, Obama simply elevates human reason to the supreme position occupied by YHWH, Allah, Brahma, the Oversoul and so on, in other paradigms. Oddly, although he can see that other people have chosen (and are thus limited by) a set of beliefs, he’s apparently oblivious to the fact that he has (and is) too. He’s in the same position as the poor schmuck who thinks everyone else has an accent, and only he doesn’t. Sooo provincial of him. Specifically, so 18th-century Western European of him. (Who’d have expected to find our Prez channeling dead white males!)
Human beings created religions. God created reason. I guess we each have to decide which of the two we trust the most.
I’ve decided that you suck.
God didn’t create reason, Greg. He gave his human creations their own volition to fail/succeed based on how they used such. Human beings didn’t create religion, but they did provide a template/guideline via the various religious sects to which humans can subscribe, based on their “volition”. So your comment … “Human beings created religions. God created reason. I guess we each have to decide which of the two we trust the most.”… makes not one lick of sense to anyone with even an hour of religious doctrine education.
Oh yes. Wow…@Lib/nonobjective is a conspiracy theorist! Go no… O’Hare is dead, like many others in unsolved crimes, and presumably by one of her associates. Can’t say that the woman wasn’t capable of riling up humans. One worthless human being, IMHO.
But I’ll forever get a grin that you think it’s some part of some vast conservative religious conspiracy theory, instead of someone close to her who apparently went off the deep end in their tolerance of her blatant antics. Considering how despicable a human she was, I don’t find it surprising that someone in her circle just snapped… not that her murder is acceptable, mind you. But it’s not like she was a Mother Teresa, giving human, fer heavens sake. I’m sure she made many enemies outside of the political realm.
But your side comment does give inside perspective to you… and none of it any more positive than your usual presence here.
I think that in a orderly universe–where all things from the smallest to the largest operate in a supremely rational manner that can best be described in terms of complex mathematics–we have to conclude that the Author of it all is very likely an embodiment of reason itself. Reason preceded the material world in which the order that stems from reason is manifested.
So there.
Oh what a bunch of high minded, self indulgent philosophy and unrelated horse puckey. So now “God” is defined and explained by science, mathematics and a man made term called “reason”, who’s parameters are defined by the flawed creation – man – himself?
Your attempts to justify your original statement about reason – predicting God’s judgement – using mathematics and science are laughable, Greg.
I think Wm T’s observation, tho terse, is right on the money. Maybe, Greg, you should switch over to the Libertarians. They also love to engage in such nonsense for hours, using equal BS.
High minded, self indulgent philosophy and unrelated horse puckey? I often wonder where all of the personal hostility comes from, and at the odd things that seem to trigger it.
The alternative to what I suggested in #17 would be an unreasoning Creator who can’t balance his checkbook, and a universe lacking order and logic, where things “just happen”.
“personal hostility”? LOL Lawdy, you’ve got thin skin for a self appointed philosopher about God, creation and your notions of an “orderly universe”, Greg.
If you’re going to grab your shovel and toss out the philosophical manure for digestion, don’t be so taken a’back when it’s met with deserved ridicule. It’s not a “personal” thing against you, Greg, the individual. It’s an observation of the tact you chose to take.
@Liberal1 (objectivity): Sounds more subjective than objective. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both Christians and professed to be Christians. Academia started the BS about them being deists.
The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine, should anyone be curious. (Presented as a .pdf document.)
I have read the biography of Thomas Paine and he does not impress me.