Is Barak Obama A Christian?

On several occasions, when Barak Obama has been charged with being a Muslim, the Senator from Illinois will respond by affirming his commitment to Christianity. From a Sun Times article, April 5, 2004, Obama said, "I am a Christian . . . I have a deep faith. I'm rooted in the Christian tradition."

Most evangelicals may accept Obama's confession as legit with a raised eyebrow. Why? As an evangelical Christian myself, I would never say "I am rooted in the Christian tradition." My faith in Jesus is not something that has grown out of my past roots. Rather, as an adult I made a definite decision to follow Christ.

Whether or not Obama can pass the mustard with most evangelicals comes into further question when the presidential candidate suggests, "I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people." It sounds like Obama, with one big superhug, is endorsing the religion of Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists and . . . just about everyone else. To Obama everyone worships the same God; What difference does it make anyway which faith you belong to? Christian? Not!

Just what is the Christian tradition Barak Obama is rooted in? From the Chicago Sun Times article we learn:

Obama's theological point of view was shaped by his uniquely multicultural upbringing. He was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white mother who came from Protestant Midwestern stock and a black African father who hailed from the Luo tribe of Kenya.

Obama describes his father, after whom he is named, as "agnostic." His paternal grandfather was a Muslim. His mother, he says, was a Christian.

In his book Dreams From My Father, A Story of Race and Inheritance Obama describes his mother as a secular humanist. She maintained a faith that rational people could shape their own destiny.

When he was 6 years old Obama's parents divorced and he moved to Indonesia with his mother and her new husband-a non-practicing Muslim.

Obama remembers that his mother would read books to him about world religions. During the day he would learn the Catholic catechisms and at night he'd hear the Muslim call for prayer and his mother's embrace of all faiths.

The senator has had an eclectic spirituality to say the least: Catholicism, secularism, universalism and Islam. He owns up to having an irregular practice of reading the Bible. However, the presidential hopeful does find the time to pray. He describes his prayer life:

It's not formal, me getting on my knees . . . I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. I'm constantly asking myself questions about what I am doing, why I am doing it."

Concerning the universalism of the democratic contender, he acknowledges the call to share one's faith in Christ is part of the New Testament tradition. In some sectors of Christianity, according to Obama, if you don't embrace Jesus Christ as personal Savior, you're going to hell. Obama hugs the fence on this essential spiritual matter: "I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die."

No one who names the name of Jesus Christ and understands who He is as the only true Redeemer, would dare suggest that people can come to a saving knowledge of God apart from Jesus Christ.

Barak's mother, an anthropologist who collected religious texts, felt that her son needed a crash course in comparative religion and what she tutored is an eclectic Christian.

Okay, so is Barak Obama a Muslim? I don't think so. However, I'm not
naive enough to think his exposure to Islam in a Muslim country like Indonesia has not left an Islamic influence on the man who may someday preside over this country in the nation's Oval Office.

In an interview with Maya Soetoro-Ng, Barak's younger half sister, she recalls, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." Regardless, while growing up in Indonesia Obama attended a Catholic school and then a Muslim public school where religious education was demanded. What would they teach in a Muslim school? Perhaps Judaism or evangelical Christianity? I don't think so.

Upon his return to Hawaii at the age of 10, Barak attended a preparatory school with a Christian affiliation.

What can we conclude about Barak's formal religious training? Catholicism and Islam. Obama was never too far from either the universalistic roots of his mother, Catholicism or the Islamic faith of his stepfather.

His exposure to Protestantism? His white grandparents, who helped raise him, we non-practicing Methodists and Baptists.

Sarah Hussein Obama, the senator's stepgrandmother but whom Barak calls his grandmother, still rises at 5 a.m. to say her prayers to Allah. In a recent interview in Kenya, Ms. Obama said, "I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith."

Barak Obama is a man who was raised to be tolerant of other faiths . . . even accepting of other's faith as sufficient for salvation.

Yet Obama was always reluctant to join a faith until the late 1980s when he met his present pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, minister of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, a man who told Sean Hannity that Christianity is a white man's religion.

Is Obama a Christian? He lacks the commitment to Christ as the only Savior of mankind-Jew or Gentile, white or black. He may be rooted in the Christian tradition, but his roots have spread out to embrace more faiths than just one.

Is Barak Obama A Christian?

Christians Forgiving Muslims. What's Next?

According to Dhimmi Watch Christian leaders recently signed a document in response to an open letter from 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals affirming the common ground between the two faiths. The Christian response to this letter was to ask Muslims to forgive Christians for their past and present transgressions against the followers of Muhammed.

The Christian document started off saying, "We want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the “war on terror”) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors."

According to the description of the Muslim letter contained in this article, the Islamic authorities spoke of the common ground between Christians and those of the Islamic faith. The Christian letter goes on to say, "We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbours."

It all sounds wonderful and warm and thoughtful. In fact, the signers on the document range from Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church to a Vineyard pastor. Jim Wallis of the left leaning Sojourners is included along with Robert Schuller and a host of other evangelical and liberal Protestant types. Most distressing is to see the names of evangelical greats like Bill Hybels noted pastor of Willow Creek Church, theologian John Stott of All Souls Church and the President of Fuller Theological Seminary, Richard Mouw.

I find this to be quite amusing since the Crusades did not happen under the auspices of the Protestant Church but the Roman Catholic Church. It was in 1095 Pope Urban II who preached the First Crusade and inspired the Crusaders to capture Jerusalem in 1099 from the Islamic Turks. Shouldn't the Pope be the one who is apologizing to the Muslims on behalf of the Roman Catholic militants who attacked Jerusalem?

Since these Protestant dignitaries feel the need to ask forgiveness of a religious faith (Islam) that attacked Western Christendom for centuries, how about these Christians ask forgiveness on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for the way they mistreated and killed Jewish people during the Crusades? Synagogues were burned to the ground with Jewish worshippers inside while Crusaders sang Christian hymns. Rick Warren, Robert Schuiller, Jim Wallis, are you ready to ask forgiveness on behalf of the Catholic Church for their butchering of Jews during the Crusades?

Do these men have any idea of what they are doing? Have we now reached a place in evangelical Christianity that all we need to do is to say the word "forgiveness," and we have a willing crowd ready to sign on the dotted line? As a US citizen should I apologize to a Brit for the American revolutionaries rebelling against King George? I remember attending a Promise Keeper event where Christians were asked to stand and ask God to forgive us for the way we as Americans treated Native American Indians. I was bewildered. My Jewish ancestors didn't do a thing to Native Americans. I refused to stand.

If one reads Christian history, it is painfully obvious that Muslims need to apologize to the Christians for sacking Jerusalem over and over until it fell to Islamic rule. In essence it is the Islamic leaders who need to apologize for destroying all of Christendom in North Africa and the Middle East and Spain. It is the Muslim leaders who need to ask forgiveness for forcibly converting everyone in their path, from Berber pagans to Afghani Buddhists. For those who would not convert to the Islamic offer of an All-Merciful Allah, the alternative was death.

For the record it was in 807 that Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non—Muslim prayer houses and of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem. Has any one heard any Muslim apology for the destruction of a Christian house of worship. God to Jihad Watch and read the list of Muslim aggression against Byzantine Christianity that went on for centuries until the Christian Crusades rose up in response.

If anyone should apologize, it should be these evangelical leaders for putting forth such a preposterous offer of pardon to a bloodthirsty religion that has done far worse than Middle Age Christianity has ever done. At least present day Christianity has reformed itself and no longer seeks the threat of death as an evangelistic tool!

Don't forget that these Christian men also extended forgiveness for the "excesses of the “war on terror”". I want to fall over faint when I read that absurdity. Yes, there have been excesses at Abu Grahib and Guantanamo. But it was aimed against political prisoners and suspected terrorist not newspaper journalists like Daniel Perl. Where are the apologies for the televised Islamic inspired beheadings? Where is the outcry from Islamic clerics for the repeated car bombings against Iraqi civilians and persecutions against Christians in Iraq?

My Christian brothers like Rick Warren and Jim Wallis need a history lesson on what took place in the holy city of Jerusalem after the Romans razed the city. Where is the apology from the Italians to the Jews for destroying Jerusalem?

Why are Christians so ready to offer forgiveness when there is no repentance? Jesus said in Luke 17:3-4, "If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. “And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” The key motivation for forgiveness in these verses is repentance. Have I missed out on an Islamic request for pardon with a full on repentance for all its atrocities?

Also, I am waiting for an Protestant Christian offer of forgiveness to the Jewish people for the Catholic led Inquisitions during the Middle Ages which included forced conversions and baptisms, torture and massacres aimed at the Jewish inhabitants of Europe. Did I miss that too?

Christians Forgiving Muslims. What's Next?