I did a little roaming on the internet yesterday, amid sniffles and decompressing from a (depressing as usual) visit to prison.  One item I ran across on YouTube piqued my interest enough that I listened to quite a bit more speechifying than I'd originally planned on.

First, I gave a listen to the (really audio) file of James Dobson's critique of Barack Obama's speech at the 2006 "Call to Renewal" conference.  The broadcast was aired two years after the speech in a  "Focus on the Family Action" segment.  The show was cohosted (I should say tag-teamed) by Tom Minnery, a VP in Dobson's political wing of his religious media empire.

The main critiques of Obama seemed to be as follows:

1.  He diminished Christianity.
2.  He diminished Dr. Dobson.
3.  He misunderstands scripture.

Those sound (especially to those of an evangelical background) like pretty serious charges.  So I headed on over to Obama's actual speech.  Funny thing was, I didn't quite read it the same way Dobson and Minnery did. 

Let's take the charges one at a time.

1.  Barack "diminished" Christianity.  According to Dobson/Minnery, Obama did this by saying the following:  "And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution...Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation and a nation of nonbelievers"

According to Minnery, the big diminishment was that the 70% figure should have been specified to be "Judeo-Christian religion"--which, if I read my history right, includes Islam.

So his point would be...what?  That we're not a society composed of many different people who are disciples of many different faiths? 

No...it's more along the lines of what we fled from in England.  Since most people believe this, everyone should be ruled by it.

2.  Obama "diminished" Dr. Dobson.  How did he do this?  By using Dobson in an illustration of "left" and "right" religio-political views in the same sentence with...GASP...Reverend Al Sharpton.

Here's the quote: 

"And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy?"

In my opinion, it takes a special sense of oneself as ultra-important (and at least semi-perfect) to take offense at a comparison of left and right political spectrum that nearly any conscious, reasonably informed person would simply nod his or her head over and understand the intent was contrast.

Not Dobson though.  He was "highly offended."

Get over your bad self.

3.  Obama misunderstands scripture.  How so, you ask?  By questioning "which version" of scripture should guide us.

In fact, this was the very point of his speech where I found myself grateful for someone using critical thinking to approach the nexus of political and religious life.  Here we have a man who says, "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles."

And he's characterized as someone who is "twisting" scripture for his own ends.  I guess Dobson and Minnery would see genuine engagement as that sort of behavior since they're so familiar with selective reading of the bible themselves.

So why am I preaching to the choir?  Because you might know people who hum along and they need to see this stuff...they need to be truly informed.

And because I read the subtext in Dobson and Minnery's comments accurately (as shown by a followup quote by Minnery on July 7th).  They are not interested in actively engaging in a discussion with Senator Obama about his beliefs.  Rather they are interested in swaying their adherents to remain faithful to the Republican party even if they have to twist the truth to do it.

The subtext?  Barack's not really a Christian.

Think I'm overstating?

Here's a quote from Minnery.  "We have to question whether he's even sincere as he speaks so lovingly about religion."

Minnery reveals more than he wants to in his unconscionable questioning of another man's soul when he says that Obama speaks lovingly about religion.

Give these guys a listen and see if you agree with me.

It's Dobson and Minnery who are in love with religion.

It's Obama who has faith.

 

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