Obama’s Religion
Photo: Bernard Pollack
So much has been made of whether Mr. Obama is a Muslim or not. This question persists in spite of the fact that he repeatedly claims to be “Christian.”
This particular conclusion on the part of many has been drawn from his extraordinary sympathies to Islamists and apparent bias that has tipped the scales toward the Muslim world and against Israel. This is something new among U.S. Presidents.
Many point to the fact that he has flown over or near Israel on numerous occasions while on official visits to Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., but never stopped in Israel.
What most people have failed to recognize is that Obama’s religion is the same religion of a vast growing number of contemporary church-going Americans.
I am one of those people who believe firmly that the very core of America’s greatness and uniqueness is due to the fact that the founding fathers built this country’s foundation solely on the rock of the Christian Scriptures. Anyone who denies this is denying the very nose on their face.
With that in mind, today we find ourselves as a culture being unhinged from that foundation and floating down the river of a new form of polytheism. Today’s modern polytheism is different only in kind from that of Rome in 1st century Christianity.
This is partly because we have a significant part of the population holding tight to that core foundation, they are tiresomely trying to keep the social structure from drifting down the stream of polytheism altogether.
Obama did not invent America’s modern drift to this unique mode of polytheism, he merely articulated it, legitimized it, and gave it his very bully pulpit, but it did not originate with him.
That drift originated in many liberal churches and seminaries and has been followed now by many evangelical mega church preachers.
What is that uniquely American polytheistic drift?
It is the claim by many of those preachers that Jesus is their Savior, but He is not the one and only Savior.
Remember that this was the very dilemma for 1st century Christians. Had they been clever enough, like their 21st century contemporaries, to compromise their faith that way...they would not have been thrown to hungry lions, or boiled in barrels of oil, or dipped in tar to light up Nero’s garden.
Rome’s polytheism was a very generous one, maybe even more generous than our modern day “tolerance”. They were very happy to add another god/savior/higher power, or whatever you may call your divine being, to the list of their idols and gods.
But the sticky wicket was with those thorny Christians and their insistence that their Savior is the only one true God, and there is no salvation or blessing apart from Him, that all other religions are false imitations of the one who left heaven, which He created, died on a cross, and rose again, so that He and He alone can save people from their sins when they turn to Him.
That is what got them into trouble, and that is precisely what most of the founding fathers of America believed. This is why today’s Christians are accused of “intolerance”!
So when Mr. Obama articulates a 21st century American drift into believing that all religions are equal in value (even though he calls himself a Christian), he is in part leading that drift. In doing so he is surrounded by some well-known preachers who, again, claim to be Christians.
That shipwreck of belief has been misleading millions of lost souls and taking them down into a spiritual abyss.
True Christians in America need to learn how to articulate their faith to a very different culture from that of their forbearers.
Screaming that, “we are departing from our foundational truth”, is only stating the obvious.
In future articles I will be defining the issues, to give those of us who are troubled by the effect of this cultural hurricane, the know-how to not only stand for the truth, but to thrive.
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