President Obama spoke on Thursday morning at the 59th annual National Prayer Breakfast. The gathering is one of those peculiar Washington pageants that elicits diametrically opposed reactions from those who bother to take note of its existence.
Those hostile to the NPB view it as a raging Christ-fest. Those in support of it view it as good, clean, absolutely necessary, public worship of God.
I, as you may have surmised, could do without the NPB. But part of being what I might call a “New Secularist” consists of dealing with reality as it is, not reality as it might have been 50 years ago.
Well, when the President of the United States of America (a Democrat) delivers a 22-minute address about his personal faith, drops half a dozen Scripture bombs along the way, and declaims “I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior”—all I can say is that the sixties are over, man!
The Golden Age of Secularism has passed. The Secular Movement—if there ever was a viable one in this country—must look at events such the NPB as an invitation to think secularism afresh (something I am trying to do in my current research).
In any case, here’s what I took away from the President’s speech:
Obama’s performance? Not for the professors, but. . . . . : Many academics, I suspect, secretly believe that Obama is one of us. As far as we’re concerned he’d rather be cogitating down at a good Div or Law School instead of working this dumb day job that he has got going now.
So whenever Obama speaks on weighty matters like religion, we professors expect nothing less than Reinhold Niebuhr meets Max Weber meets Ralph Ellison. And we are invariably disappointed. That’s because a Commander-in-Chief who ruminates like an Oxford Don is not long for the White House.
Still, while yesterday’s address was a platitude-fest as well (i.e., “My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years,”; “my faith journey has had its twists and turns. It hasn’t always been a straight line”), the overall speech was quite effective.
Obama spoke slowly. He avoided grand rhetorical gestures. He was humble and quite frankly, he looked exhausted—all of which lent his address an air of authenticity, even gravitas.
Using faith and values talk to his advantage: In last week’s State of the Union, the president refracted nearly all of his issues through the prism of education.
At the National Prayer Breakfast he employed a similar tactic. Obama managed to skillfully package partisan political points in the guise of God Talk.
Notice how Obama addresses the problem of incivility—in particular the rather uncivil charge that he is not a Christian—by seeking refuge in God:
When Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we’re being true to our conscience and true to our God. “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Now observe how the president delivers a stealthy but firm elbow to the Tea Party and others who seem at war with the very notion of government:
There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need . . . . And that’s why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.
The office or the Kremlin?: Mid-speech the president gave a shout out to “The director of our Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership’s office, Joshua DuBois—young minister himself—he starts my morning off with meditations from Scripture.”
I wish Mr. DuBois would start off my morning with explanations of what exactly that Office is doing—a never-ending source of confusion, and even awe, among reporters, policy analysts, and professors in Washington, DC.
I have complained about this for years. I have nothing more to add. So, heck, let the President words speak for themselves:
Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government. And that’s why my administration has taken a fresh look at the way we organize with faith groups, the way we work with faith groups through our Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Raging Christ-fest? While the president thankfully steers clear of “Christian Nation” rhetoric, there was simply too much of Obama the Christian yesterday.
Come to think of it, the National Prayer Breakfast often has this effect on politicians. Senator Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, sprinkled so many references to the gospels at the 48th National Prayer Breakfast in 2000 that he made George W. Bush look like a desk officer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Obama may earnestly believe that Republican Senator Tom Coburn is his “Brother in Christ.” But such a sentiment sounds odd coming from a president who once reminded his Turkish hosts that ours is not “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation,” but “a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”
Such a nation, one would hope, would be led by a person who understands that this type of rhetoric can be deeply troubling to those who don’t believe in Christ. Just as it may offend those Christians who believe that Christ’s teachings tend to become distorted when they are mouthed by the worldly powers that be.
9 Responses to Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast
dank48 - February 4, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Well, sure. But Obama is, after all, a politician. What do you expect him to do?
There are three things you can count on in this world: a politician’s promise, a prostitute’s smile, and an alcoholic’s resolution.
But, in (non-Christian) charity, let’s assume that everything Obama said about his faith is in fact true. That is, he disagrees with some of the rest of us and agrees with rather more of the rest of us. I say it’s still considerable progress from George H.W. Bush, who, when asked what he thought about atheists and U.S. citizenship, said that in his opinion, well, no, atheists couldn’t really be considered to be “full” citizens, whatever that meant. I don’t for a second think Bush I was or is dumb enough to believe such nonsense, but I do think he understands the electoral process. In elections, as in war, truth is the first casualty.
11142568 - February 4, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I am reminded of Gibbon:
The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. Decline and Fall… Vol I, ch. 2
Peter Baker
jc100 - February 7, 2011 at 9:26 am
LOL
lindabrodskymd - February 7, 2011 at 11:26 am
Obama is the greatest chameleon we have ever had for a president. His rhetoric is to be ignored. If we let him stand on his record thus far, he has failed us all. Just another day talking his way through the presidency.
reality_chick - February 7, 2011 at 11:41 am
Obama’s crocodile religiosity should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed his election campaign and his Presidency. In his election campaign Obama entreated his congregation to have ‘hope’ (or faith) in an agenda that promised Liberal reforms and an end to US military aggression overseas. As President Obama has delivered an escalation of the US military aggression, a continuance of torture, bailouts and sweetheart deals for predatory banks and corporations, and a law that requires the poor to purchase health care isurance that they cannot afford. Obama is manifestly not a Liberal; he is a neocon pretending to be a Liberal.
Obama’s crocodile religiosity is the same as George W. Bush’s (or Bush Senior’s, or Reagan’s, or Clinton’s) crocodile religiosity; it is a mask that attempts to conceal a worshipper of Mammon.
The religious mumbo-jumbo and superpatriotic jingoism of the National Prayer Breakfast is the Christian equivalent of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meetings, at which every US President swears his unwavering loyalty to the racist Theocracy of Israel, which is perpetrating ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinians.
In recent decades every US President has been a puppet of the wealthy ruling elite that effectively rule the USA, and Obama is no exception. As the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy demonstrated, any President who challenges the authority of the USA’s ‘shadow government’ is risking his life.
rburns - February 7, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Don’t worry about anything Obama says about his Faith. He doesn’t mean it when he says it and won’t follow through afterward.
dangoorevitch - February 7, 2011 at 6:01 pm
My goodness! The Constitution only says Congress should pass no law establishing an official Church and allow all forms of worship. When last I looked we weren’t rounding up Methodists or Catholics and putting them in jail. Get a grip!
gloriawalker - February 8, 2011 at 1:39 am
Do you recall George Bush running and falling to his knees at a Billy Graham rally on tv before the election? Do you not think people of faith voted for him even though he did not win the election? Do you not realize that not only business/commerce and rich people control everything and RELIGION JOINTED THE PARTY?
PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS BEEN A MAN OF FAITH LONG BEFORE BEING ELECTED. HE LEFT A CHURCH AFTER THE MEDIA TALKED SO MUCH ABOUT HIS PASTOR AND HELD HIM ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT REV. WRIGHT SAID. HE DECIDED TO NOT MAKE A PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE CHOICE OF WORSHIP TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM CAUSING PROBLEMS AT HIS CURRENT PLACE OF WORSHIP. HE AND HIS FAMILY HAVE THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP AS YOU DO.
FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO BE CRITICAL OF.
dank48 - February 9, 2011 at 9:24 am
Get a grip, GloriaWalker.
In this current economic swamp, in which the hopelessly jobless sitting at home watching television are regaled with commercials for luxury items like cars costing more than my house, not to mention other, even less utilitarian things, as if our masters were daring the proles to start a revolution, it might be worth recalling the old explanation of the difference between Berlin and Vienna.
In Berlin the situation is serious but not hopeless. In Vienna the situation is hopeless but not serious.
Henry IV is quoted as saying, “Paris is well worth a mass.” Do we really expect politicians to be different? Why wouldn’t any politician–regardless of convictions, assuming a politician is capable of having convictions–cheerfully accept the raft of votes available simply for a show of religiosity?
People are shocked, shocked at hypocrisy in politics. What would one expect? As has been said before, “Nobody goes to a whorehouse to listen to the piano player.”