Obama: The Politician Without a Church

POLITICO has run a piece citing various claims that President Obama is a practicing Christian of some sort. Nice try. But the article is entirely unconvincing.

Obama isn’t prevented from going to a Christian church and doesn’t cite security reasons for not attending. Instead, he “worries that his presence detracts from other worshippers’ experience,” the publication said. We are told he reads scripture and prays in private.

In 2008, when he first ran for president, the Obama campaign insisted he was a “committed Christian.” Glenn Greenwald, who later became NSA defector Edward Snowden’s mouthpiece, found Obama’s claim so alarming that he wrote an article for Salon about it. Greenwald, whose anti-American outlook includes Muslim sympathies, was apparently deeply concerned that Obama could, in fact, be a committed Christian.

We now understand that Obama’s Christian claim was as phony as his promise, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

POLITICO reports that Obama has “attended Sunday services only occasionally, visiting a patchwork of congregations 19 times in all since taking office, according to a POLITICO analysis of White House pool reports.” Further down in the story we learn that “In all, Obama has gone to services on about 6 percent of the Sundays of his presidency and just once on Christmas Day, in 2011, which also happened to be a Sunday.”

Another insight into Obama’s religiosity is when he tries to quote from the Bible or make religious references. He once compared Mary and Joseph to illegal aliens. Even The Washington Post admitted that was false. On another occasion, he said, “The good book says, don’t throw stones in glass houses.” But the Bible has no such quote.

It appears that this man of deep faith, as described by POLITICO, doesn’t even read the “good book” he likes to quote from. So what has he been doing in those private prayer and Bible study sessions?

But the story goes beyond mere hypocrisy.

When questions emerged about Obama’s religious affiliation, in view of his Muslim background, his aides flatly asserted that he was a “practicing Christian” and was “baptized” in the Trinity United Church of Christ. We examined that claim and found it wanting. As we noted at the time, “People see him [Obama] playing golf on Sunday; they don’t see him going to church.”

Obama’s claim to being baptized in the Christian faith is found in his second book,The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006. Obama wrote on page 208, “I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.” We argued that what Obama described sounds like a religious experience, but not what Christians regard as baptism.

Obama’s pastor for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, gave a speech in which he praised Marxism and faulted the media for claiming that communism and Christianity were somehow opposed to one another.

It also turns out that Wright’s church accepted Muslims as members. Wright toldauthor Edward Klein that he “made it comfortable” for Obama to accept Christianity “without having to renounce his Islamic background.”

Obama is now on vacation in Hawaii, and the White House is releasing details about his daily activities. “Like most Americans,” the White House proclaims, “President Obama is a creature of habit.” But church or Bible study doesn’t appear to be on his list of priorities. His activities are said to include:

• Daily morning workout at the Semper Fit Center at MCBH [Marine Corps Base Hawaii]
• Golf at the Kaneohe Klipper golf course
• Golf at the Mid-Pacific Country Club
• Golf at the Ko’olau Golf Club
• Golf at the Royal Hawaiian Golf Club
• Dinner at Alan Wong’s Restaurant
• Dinner at Nobu Waikiki
• Dinner at Morimoto Waikiki
• Visit Punchbowl Cemetery
• Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay
• Christmas Day: Visit service members at Anderson Hall
• New Year’s Eve: Traditional talent show at home
• Bowling at K-Bay Lanes at MCBH
• Basketball at MCBH
• Swim at Pyramid Rock Beach
• Swim at Bellows Beach
• Shave Ice at Island Snow in Kailua
• Hike the Maunawili Falls trail

One writer, Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a self-described heathen, didn’t like the POLITICO story for another reason. He doesn’t even like the topic of Obama’s religiosity being discussed. “It doesn’t matter if Obama goes to church or not,” he wrote. “It doesn’t matter if he is even a Christian, or, as conservatives often charge, a Muslim. In a word, it is nobody’s concern but that of Barack Obama himself.”

Of course, if Obama claims to be a Christian, and the evidence suggests otherwise, it is a significant story. That’s because his alleged Christianity was a factor in his 2008 and 2012 victories.

In 2008, for example, Catholics voted for Obama by a margin of 54-45. In 2012, the margin was 50-48.

Now, with his recognition and bailout of the Castro regime, he can count on Pope Francis being in his corner. It’s quite an achievement for a politician without a church.