“The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R). “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”
One of the most distressingly powerful traits of sin is its ability to let us convince ourselves that what we do is not so bad. As St. Paul said:
This is no accidental concept in Obama's thought or speech. He continues after the offending passage:
So one round of critique says, "Why is Obama bringing up the Crusades and Inquisition, that was so long ago?" Well, yes, but self-proclaimed "good Christians" upheld slavery, segregagation, and lynching much more recently. Self-proclaimed "good Christians" are calling for concentration campus for LGBT+ folk. A Christian general called the fight against terrorism as a Christian battle against Satan (and I can't think of a better expression of the Holy War Idea). While Christianity is not the orgainizing principle around which we determine who to fight, my research into religious rhetoric's place in U.S. history leads me to conclude that while we have never fought a holy war we've never fought a strictly secular war, either. Christians are notoriously quick to proclaim the righteousness of our causes, regardless of the sin embedded therein. This should not be a surprise to Christians who take sin seriously.
And within the above critique is the very odd notion that many conservatives would deny: the idea of uninterrupted progress which states that humanity is always on an upward swing to a more civilized and (dare I say) progressive state of being. It seems convenient that this notion of uninterrupted progress is believable when Christianity is thought to be beyond its sordid past and that Islam cannot make it past its own history (or radical Islam's present). And personally, it sounds to me like a denial of sin's nature.
In my tradition, confession and reflection are built into our primary worship services (and there they should remain). We are asked to hold our nature and our true selves in front of us and confront our misdeeds in spite of our tendency to seek self-righteousness instead of God's righteousness. A prayer breakfast, then, to my mind, seems an appropriate place to do such an activity, or simply make allusion to our tendency toward sin. And knowing the nature of sin, it's not surprising that what Obama said was hard for some to hear.
With such a promise of controversy, I was surprised to watch the offending snippet of video and find it so...innocuous. For the sake of completeness, here is the entire address:
From the Washington Post, "In the words of Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Obama’s comments about Christianity show “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison....What we need more is a “moral framework from the administration and a clear strategy for defeating ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State."
This is exemplary of one strand of critique. Critics are unsure of Obama's ability to recognize ISIS as a threat. That it's not the right time to talk about the failures of Christianity, it's the time to talk about the failures of Islam. Or, as the site Western Journalism opens their article: "For weeks now, many in the media and across America have been asking the question as to why President Obama won’t declare that radical Islam is the enemy that our country and much of the rest of the civilized world are fighting."
I guess my very basic response to this is that I am unsure that the National Prayer Breakfast is the venue to declare open hostilities to any sect of a world religion, even those who are responsible for such evil acts. So while I understand why folks are disappointed in the (lack of) response to ISIS, being angry that a strong response did not happen at the prayer breakfast strikes me as odd. And removed from the context of anxiety about ISIS, nothing about what Obama said struck me as wrong.
That brings us to a few other possible critiques. As Gilmore said, every believing Christian in the U.S. should be offended (I wonder what it means that I am not?). Could it be that the president dared to even compare Christianity to Islam? Could it be that he brought up specific Christian sins? Could it be that America is in Gilmore's opinion beyond reproach?
I think it appropriate to then speak as to why I--as a Christian-- am not only not offended, but appreciative of Obama's remarks. They speak to an incredibly faithful view of our understanding of ourselves as fallen creatures.
As the WaPo notes:
And a link to the transcript--and the 'offending' passage (with a tad more context):
I'll come back to why I think Obama's comments are theologically and biblically sound, but I'll share what some of the criticism seems to be.But we also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge -- or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon. From a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris, we have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith, professed to stand up for Islam, but, in fact, are betraying it. We see ISIL, a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism -- terrorizing religious minorities like the Yezidis, subjecting women to rape as a weapon of war, and claiming the mantle of religious authority for such actions.We see sectarian war in Syria, the murder of Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, religious war in the Central African Republic, a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Europe, so often perpetrated in the name of religion.So how do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities -- the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ...So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.
From the Washington Post, "In the words of Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Obama’s comments about Christianity show “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison....What we need more is a “moral framework from the administration and a clear strategy for defeating ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State."
This is exemplary of one strand of critique. Critics are unsure of Obama's ability to recognize ISIS as a threat. That it's not the right time to talk about the failures of Christianity, it's the time to talk about the failures of Islam. Or, as the site Western Journalism opens their article: "For weeks now, many in the media and across America have been asking the question as to why President Obama won’t declare that radical Islam is the enemy that our country and much of the rest of the civilized world are fighting."
I guess my very basic response to this is that I am unsure that the National Prayer Breakfast is the venue to declare open hostilities to any sect of a world religion, even those who are responsible for such evil acts. So while I understand why folks are disappointed in the (lack of) response to ISIS, being angry that a strong response did not happen at the prayer breakfast strikes me as odd. And removed from the context of anxiety about ISIS, nothing about what Obama said struck me as wrong.
That brings us to a few other possible critiques. As Gilmore said, every believing Christian in the U.S. should be offended (I wonder what it means that I am not?). Could it be that the president dared to even compare Christianity to Islam? Could it be that he brought up specific Christian sins? Could it be that America is in Gilmore's opinion beyond reproach?
I think it appropriate to then speak as to why I--as a Christian-- am not only not offended, but appreciative of Obama's remarks. They speak to an incredibly faithful view of our understanding of ourselves as fallen creatures.
As the WaPo notes:
Obama’s remarks spoke to his unsparing, sometimes controversial, view of the United States — where triumphalism is often overshadowed by a harsh assessment of where Americans must try harder to live up to their own self-image. Only by admitting these shortcomings, he has argued, can we fix problems and move beyond them.
“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” he said at the breakfast.It is at this point worth noting that Obama once named Reinhold Niebuhr, probably the most influencial Christian public theologian of the last century, as his favorite philosopher. One of Neibuhr's most influencial works is "The Irony of American History" in which Niebuhr points out the danger of the American psyche is that our great virtues can blind us to our great vices. It is a powerful and incisive insight into the nature of sin. It certainly seems to be not far below Obama's thought about our national identity. And I'm personally grateful that the knowledge of the sin we individually and collectively are capable of is so close to the surface. And it is worth noting that Obama's "offensive" comments are deeply rooted in scripture.
One of the most distressingly powerful traits of sin is its ability to let us convince ourselves that what we do is not so bad. As St. Paul said:
"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Romans 7:15-25)and:
For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)Further, St. John writes:
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." (1 John 1:8-10)Sin is ever-present, always possible, and capable of creating within us a powerful self-deception about our own righteousness as compared to others. For these reasons, the critique of Obama makes much more sense to me. He reminds us that we Christians have sinned--we have that in our history and our present--and that humanity or a faith tradition does not outgrow or progress away from the possibility of sin.
This is no accidental concept in Obama's thought or speech. He continues after the offending passage:
I believe there are a few principles that can guide us, particularly those of us who profess to believe.
And, first, we should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt -- not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.I suggest that if a Christian has a problem with the above, an astounding feat of biblical twisting will need to occur.
Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth -- our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments. And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing and we’re staggering and stumbling towards Him, and have some humility in that process. And that means we have to speak up against those who would misuse His name to justify oppression, or violence, or hatred with that fierce certainty. No God condones terror. No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives, or the oppression of those who are weaker or fewer in number.
So one round of critique says, "Why is Obama bringing up the Crusades and Inquisition, that was so long ago?" Well, yes, but self-proclaimed "good Christians" upheld slavery, segregagation, and lynching much more recently. Self-proclaimed "good Christians" are calling for concentration campus for LGBT+ folk. A Christian general called the fight against terrorism as a Christian battle against Satan (and I can't think of a better expression of the Holy War Idea). While Christianity is not the orgainizing principle around which we determine who to fight, my research into religious rhetoric's place in U.S. history leads me to conclude that while we have never fought a holy war we've never fought a strictly secular war, either. Christians are notoriously quick to proclaim the righteousness of our causes, regardless of the sin embedded therein. This should not be a surprise to Christians who take sin seriously.
And within the above critique is the very odd notion that many conservatives would deny: the idea of uninterrupted progress which states that humanity is always on an upward swing to a more civilized and (dare I say) progressive state of being. It seems convenient that this notion of uninterrupted progress is believable when Christianity is thought to be beyond its sordid past and that Islam cannot make it past its own history (or radical Islam's present). And personally, it sounds to me like a denial of sin's nature.
In my tradition, confession and reflection are built into our primary worship services (and there they should remain). We are asked to hold our nature and our true selves in front of us and confront our misdeeds in spite of our tendency to seek self-righteousness instead of God's righteousness. A prayer breakfast, then, to my mind, seems an appropriate place to do such an activity, or simply make allusion to our tendency toward sin. And knowing the nature of sin, it's not surprising that what Obama said was hard for some to hear.
