Barack Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ.
This was his choice. It is not a matter of heritage, but of a firm adult conversion experience.
The United Church of Christ is not just any group. It is one of the most progressive denominations in the United States. Theologically it is proudly heterodox. Religiously most traditional Christians, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, will have serious disagreements with this group. Such discussions, if conducted in a civil manner, are good and exceedingly important. They are not, however relevant to Senator Obama’s quest for the White House.
Generally, Christians who attack a man’s theology in the political realm are wrong. The theology of the UCC and its disdain for theological knowledge are not relevant to Senator Obama’s quest for the White House.
How then is it relevant? Most of the positive positions within the United Church of Christ are in fact social and political. The church is so proudly theologically diverse that it is united by almost nothing else. These social and political ideas are relevant to the voter if Senator Obama does not distance himself from a religious group he chose to join. The very liberal positions of the UCC, if he tacitly agrees with them, will help him with some voters and hurt him with others.
When Mitt Romney ran for president, I argued on the Washington Post site that mainstream religious groups and their theological ideas are not relevant to the political process except where they touched on civic affairs. Since the LDS Church supports traditional American views on human life and the family, voters who wanted to experiment with both life and the family had reason to ask hard questions of Romney. This was especially true when he was claiming to be “pro-choice.” His religious convictions, one of the most consistent things about him, were at odds with his stated political views. His shift to a pro-life position actually made sense of his church affiliation.
It is fair to ask a politician where he agrees or disagrees with the stated civic goals of his religion.
If the same standard is applied to Senator Obama, as it should be in fairness, the junior senator from Illinois faces a serious problem with many moderate and conservative voters.
His chosen religious group has almost no agreed on “theology” that is not political or does not have powerful civic implications. As a very theologically liberal group, there is strong appeal to civic engagement and social justice as the church defines it. The UCC is part of one hundred years of liberal theology that has developed a new form of Christianity stripped of almost every calling except the prophetic confrontation of secular culture with their definition of justice. Historically and practically, this confrontation is almost always in the direction of increased government involvement in areas like housing and health care.
The social gospel, the theological heritage of the UCC, is mostly about bringing the “kingdom” into being now.
Changing laws on marriage and family is important to the UCC as a matter of justice. Against most Christians at most places at most times, the UCC is extremely supportive of abortion as a positive right that demands full legal support.
The progressive Theodore Roosevelt worried in his time about reformers who were “soft” on the use of the military. This worry has come full flower in the UCC. It is functionally pacifist and it is hard to think of a single military engagement of the last forty years that it did not oppose. Safe to say if the”wisdom” it now represents had been heeded, the Cold War almost certainly would have been conducted differently than it was by both parties with uncertain results.
The UCC idea of international relations is not that of the Truman Democrat or the Reagan Republican. It has, so far as I know, never been tried by any great nation. It is almost entirely Utopian in its hopes and means.
In short, for Senator Obama’s chosen church the theological is the political. I cannot, in reading about it, find any reason to separate the two. With Mormonism, traditional Christianity, or with other monotheistic and supernatural faiths (such as mainstream Islam or religious Judaism), there is a realm that is “not of this world” central to the theology. Those required metaphysical beliefs are extremely minimal in Obama’s chosen religious home.
The kingdom of God is not just coming for the UCC, they long to bring it in. Weirdly in a media where the slightest whiff of “theocracy” on the right brings rumbles of worry, this desire to bring Christ’s kingdom to the United States using an ugly blend of socialism and sixties morality causes hardly a worry. Perhaps it is because secularists recognize in it a functionally secular vision tricked out with religious language.
The bottom line is that the UCC has so many positions on matters of government that Senator Obama would need far more than one speech to cover them all. Yet as an adult convert to this church, he owes an explanation of how far he is willing to go to bring Christ’s justice to the city of man using the power of the government. Is Senator Obama a Christian Democrat on the European model? There would be nothing odd about this from a UCC point of view.
I propose no “religious test” for Senator Obama. However, much of the UCC practice and “theology” is not religious in the traditional sense of that term, but secular or civic. It is a social gospel in line with the left-of-center social gospel of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Does Senator Obama agree with this point of view? If he does, it will have powerful implications for his views in office. This is no different than noting that the Thomism and natural law theology of a Catholic jurist will also be meaningful.
Voters must decide if they like the implications.
Just as Southern Baptists must explain the implications of their theology of persons in the public square and just as Roman Catholic must defend their high view of “natural law,” so Senator Obama should explain his chosen embrace of very far-left-of-center church whose creed embraces a social gospel.
Obama’s recently retired pastor, the Reverend Wright, was not radical in the UCC. If you doubt it, read the response of the UCC to the controversy. He was mainstream. He expressed things in an effective and fired up way, which is rare in the soft-boiled confines of most left-of-center churches. However, his positions were solidly in the center of the far-left UCC.
Voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin have not traditionally favored the kinds of international policies and social policies of groups like the UCC.
If Senator Obama has chosen this group, then he must have a reason for it. He has not distanced himself from its functional pacifism, its tendency to look to the state for solutions to every problem, and he openly has embraced the UCC attack on what Pope John Paul the Great called the “culture of life.”
It is not religious bigotry to ask if the social implications, which the UCC web site clearly states, are those Middle America wants to see in the White House the next four years.