On the Hugh Hewitt Show on April 30, 2008, Andrew Sullivan described Senator Obama as being a voice for “moderate” Christianity.
This may, for all I know, be true of his personal piety (one hopes so), but it is not true of his choice of church groups.
Whatever the merits of Senator Obama as a candidate for President, Senator Obama is an active member of one of the most liberal church groups in the United States. From a Catholic, Orthodox, and traditional Protestant perspective (which pretty much runs the gamut!), it has a highly deficient statement of faith. One can be a member without holding anything like traditional Christian ideas.
Don’t take my word for it. Read their web site.
As they say, “The UCC tends to be a mostly progressive denomination that unabashedly engages heart and mind.”
Fine.
All traditional Christians should support engaging the heart and mind. It is good of the UCC to tell us they are “mostly progressive.”
Let’s not pretend they are not.
Read the UCC web site and ask, “Where is Nicaean Christianity?” This is not a mainstream or “moderate” Christian group, but one that has dispensed (or very nearly dispensed) with all vestiges of historic Christianity in favor of the late nineteenth century social gospel. This is a matter of their history.
Christianity has long had, in the United States, a numerically declining left. It is outside the mainstream of the “great conversation” theologically and has drifted into something close to numeric irrelevance. When the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Pope, and the Southern Baptists feel free not to engage your “ideas” you are pretty far out there as far as theology or Christianity goes.
Calling them moderate would be like calling King-James only Baptists mainstream. (Actually King James only Baptists may be larger and are closer doctrinally to “mere Christianity” than the United Church of Christ . . . which is damning them by faint praise indeed.)
Sullivan’s assertion is ludicrous, unless Senator Obama is disconnected from his own choice of religious groups.
The United Church of Christ is small, loud, and proudly progressive. Rev. Wright is in their mainstream. They are not, however, in the mainstream of Christian thought in any community. They do not represent mainstream African-American religious opinion, which is even more traditional theologically and socially than non-African American religious opinion.
Senator Obama did not join a black Pentecostal group or even any of the traditional African-American mainline groups. He joined a denomination where theology unifies less than public policy.
This is not to attack that position, but merely to stop anyone from pretending that his choices were other than they were. Perhaps he was naive theologically and did not understand his choice, though I think that belittles his intellect and decision. More likely, given his background he did not understand how fringe the UCC really is compared to mainstream Christian opinion.
Fans of Obama do him no favor to pretend otherwise. Early on his supporters tried to assert that Rev. Wright was not radical, just being taken out of context by the media. Eventually, even Obama had to admit the truth. Supporters of the candidate will do Senator Obama injury if they pretend he joined a church that is in the Christian mainstream, as opposed to one on the edge.
Otherwise, when revelations begin to drip out in the media that Rev. Wright is a hero in the very leftist United Church of Christ, Senator Obama will be left in the same position. As of this writing, material by Wright appears on their home page.
Senator Obama may not agree with his own religious group. As a former Episcopalian, I can relate to that. If so, he should say so now, before everybody catches up to the fact that despites Andrew Sullivan’s assertion, Senator Obama chose to join one of the most theological “different” and edgy religious groups in Christianity.
That does not disqualify him from office, but it is the truth. In voting for President of the United States, I have argued many times that religious affiliation can have some standing in a rational consideration of the candidate. I have suggested how to go about it.
Obama’s church (the UCC) is within the American liberal tradition. We would anticipate policy values from a member normal in the Democrat Party. Therefore, like the LDS Church and Romney, membership in the UCC should not be used as an immediate disqualification for a reasonable person’s vote. However, if you do not like the public policy pronouncements of the UCC (and there are many of them), then you will have to see if Obama agrees with them. There is a presumption that he would by his active membership in the UCC.
His membership also indicates his “comfort level” with certain kinds of discourse. Again, just as Romney’s Mormonism demonstrated a comfort level with right of center political discourse (which is dominant in the few cases where Mormon doctrine intersects public policy), so Obama’s membership in the UCC informs us of his “comfort zone.”
It does explain Senator Obama’s inability to hear how extreme Rev. Wright sounded to most Americans and to the vast majority of Christians.
As far as I can tell, Senator Obama does agree with most of these public policy pronouncements and so cannot receive center-right votes. Perhaps this is wrong, but it is reasonable to ask. The Obama campaign should anticipate these questions and get them out of the way . . . or face the Wright “problem” multiplied by examples of hundreds of pastors with very left-of-center public policy opinions.