On a Mission from God
If one searches for Obama’s position on the separation of church and state, one is repeatedly directed to a speech given by Obama at the Call to Renewal’s Building a Covenant for a New America. A video of a portion of the speech is posted several times on youtube and it is described by one poster this way:
Barack Obama discusses the importance of The Separation of Church and State in a pluralistic society.
Another poster says this:
Obama explains the importance of church-state separation in a variety of ways. What it comes down to is; In a diverse democratic society, any proposed policy must justify itself via the benefits we ALL see, rather than via arguments that only hold true to people who have one certain religious worldview.
Neither is correct and Obama’s speech was not about separation of church and state- but rather how government can take advantage of religion. He pays lip service to the separation of church and state but not so much about keeping religion out of politics as it was keeping politics out of religion:
For one, they need to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy, but the robustness of our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves. It was the forbearers of the evangelicals who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it.
But then makes the argument that religion must bow to government:
This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.
Thus it ought to surprise no one that Barack Obama’s policy has been to intermingle church and state when it to his advantage to do so. He’s on a Mission from God.
During his run for the Presidency Barack Obama gave a campaign speech in the United Church of Christ’s General Synod in Hartford Ct in June of 2007.
The speech caught the interest of the IRS:
NEW YORK — The IRS is investigating the United Church of Christ over a speech Sen. Barack Obama gave at its national meeting last year after he became a candidate for president, the denomination said Tuesday.
Obama, an Illinois Democrat, belongs to the 1.2 million-member Protestant group through his Chicago congregation.
In a letter the denomination received Monday, the IRS said “reasonable belief exists” that the circumstances surrounding the speech violated restrictions on political activity for tax-exempt organizations. The denomination has denied any wrongdoing.
The week before the Hartford speech Obama told an Iowa audience:
‘‘My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work,’’
And again in Kentucky the following year:
On the rear of the flyer is a little homily about how Obama visited a local church one Sunday. That day Obama felt a beckoning of the Spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his life.
On Father’s Day of 2008 Obama again campaigned in a church:
Obama headed to church this Father’s Day Sunday in his hometown of Chicago — the first time he’s been to church since he severed relations with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The Obama family attended services at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, one of the city’s largest African American congregations and just six and a half miles from Obama’s former place of worship, Trinity Church of Christ.
Longtime church leader Bishop Arthur Brazier greeted his “good friend” warmly and touchingly noted, “[Obama] has done something [in] this country that I never thought I would live to see.” He continued, “I am filled with emotion because I have lived through some very tough times in America. But the America today is not the America of yesteryear. And I don’t think, I don’t think it behooves us well to keep talking about the past. The Apostle Paul said forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out to the things that are before.”
At the end of his speech, Obama thanked Apostolic for their hospitality and urged them to pray for him and for Michelle. The senator left the sanctuary before the actual sermon to be delivered by Bishop Brazier’s son Byron Brazier and didn’t get a chance to hear Apostolic’s prayer for him.
And thus it ought to come as no surprise that Valerie Jarrett recently took to the pulpit to campaign for Obama.
On the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett visited Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to give a political speech, in support of her boss (Barack Obama) and congressional Democrats
“We all sleep a little better at night knowing Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants are not plotting a terrorist attack against the United States,” she said, eliciting applause from the crowd.
There was also a brief jab at Republicans.
“Teachers, and firefighters, and policemen, whose jobs are now in jeopardy because congress, well let me be specific, because the Republicans in congress …”
Before she could finish her sentence, people in the congregation were laughing, and applauding.
And to top it off, the church held a voter registration following her political speech.
It was suggested that Jarrett’s speech might be in violation of IRS law:
Valerie Jarrett’s partisan speech at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church may have violated the IRS tax rules for churches’ political activities, said a prominent free speech attorney.
“It is problematic under current regulations,” said Erik Stanley, a senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is campaigning to roll back IRS curbs on believers’ speech.
And that’s before the so-called separation of church and state. Obama is abusing religion in the name of politics, not that that matters.
After all, Obama is doing the Lord’s work.