Obama Still "In Between Churches"
President Obama has yet to pick a new church since his highly visible split with his previous one and his radical former preacher Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But all of this is not to lead us to believe that President Obama is not a spiritual man. The explanation, it turns out, is quite the opposite. Not only is President Obama very spiritual, but he also is skipping church for a very good reason.
HONOLULU — Barack Obama has long stressed the importance of religion in his life.
But as his fellow Christians around the world attended Christmas services on Wednesday and Thursday, the president-elect and his family remained sequestered at their vacation compound on the windward coast of Oahu.
His lack of attendance at formal religious services showcased a dilemma faced by Obama, who is between churches and often expresses concern about bringing the disruption of his security detail into the lives of others.
Still, he has not attended a public church service since before being elected, a departure from the actions of his two immediate predecessors.
"The president-elect didn't want to disrupt a church community on Christmas with the burdens that come with a presidential visit," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said Thursday.
Now excuse me for being a bit skeptical here, but let's try to reason this one through for a minute. President Obama doesn't want to "disrupt a church with the burdens that come with a presidential visit", yet he has no problem disrupting the entire population of our largest city for a couple of years with the burdens that come with a terrorist trial in NYC? I'm not buying it.
The fact is, many United States Presidents have attended church, and while I am sure there are security concerns and inconveniences to members of the congregation, they don't generally seem to mind. Furthermore, if President Obama considers this to be a great disruption and didn't want to be the grinch on Christmas, then why did he attend the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church's Martin Luther King Jr services? What does he have against Dr. King? Why did he want to disrupt this service? Of course, he did give a speech there to push his healtcare reform, but I'm sure there is a church in Hawaii that would have allowed him to do the same.
Far be it from me to criticize anyone for not attending church. I haven't been to one in quite some time myself. But if you're not going to go, just be honest. I would even allow President Obama to borrow my excuse. As a trucker, I have plenty to chose from. Between scheduling, proximity of churches to truck stops, and inability to regularly attend the same church, I have plenty to chose from. But I go with "I didn't feel like going", becuase it's the truth.
President Obama insists that, despite his poor church attendance, he is not at a loss for spiritual guidance.
Every day, the president receives "devotionals," or passages meant to bring one closer to God, from Joshua DuBois, the head of his Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
"Whether it's a passage of scripture or a piece out of a book that I think he might be interested in or a prayer, it's something to start his day off on the right note," DuBois told Fox News.
When he took office, Obama fought vehemently with his security staff to keep that BlackBerry, a highly-secure version of the standard store-bought phone and messaging device that has now become something of a spiritual lifeline.
I would like to point out that I get updates from the PajamaGram company to my BlackBerry, but that hardly makes me some type of pajama devotee. It was a one time gift thing. If anyone knows how to get off that email list, kindly let me know. Back to the issue.
Obama's spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jim Wallis, can't understand with the "preoccupation" with if and when the Obamas will decide on a formal place in which to worship.
"(It's) really a kind of a side-light and a distraction. I'm more concerned about someone's daily practice of faith than where they go to church," he told Fox News.
"And so Barack Obama has a daily practice of faith that shapes his personal life, his family and of course his public responsibility," he said. "So I'm grateful to see that."
I wasn't sure who this Rev. Jim Wallis was, so I googled. I found him here, at "The Ordinary Radicals", a documentary about a "revolutionary Christianity" here in the United States. But wasn't Obama offended when Sean Hannity was calling Rev. Wright a radical? I guess some things never change, as evidenced by the following text from Obama's book Dreams From My Father.
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.
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