Politico Is Very Concerned About President Obama's Church Attendance
Credit: KTLA.com
December 26, 2014

Politico writer Jennifer Epstein is quite concerned about how often the President and First Lady attend church.

“The president’s Christian faith is not connected to or dependent upon anyone else’s beliefs about him, any particular policy issue, any moment in the news cycle or anything else,” DuBois said. “The president’s faith existed long before the While House and will continue after he closes the door to the White House for the last time.”

Critics say that wouldn’t be readily apparent from watching his public comings and goings. After disavowing his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and leaving Wright’s Chicago church during the 2008 campaign, Obama was widely expected to seek out a church in Washington that he’d attend with some frequency. Instead, he’s attended Sunday services only occasionally, visiting a patchwork of congregations 19 times in all since taking office, according to a POLITICO analysis of White House pool reports.

Evidently Epstein and her employer have failed to discern the difference between religion and faith.

In many cases, religion is an outward manifestation of professed faith, but bears no relationship to active faith. One can attend church and be faithless. Many do. Like those who claim to be Christians while spewing hatred over other people, or those who "pray at the gates" for public acclimation while behaving like utter animals in private.

Like many Republicans, for example. George W. Bush rarely attended church during his presidency, but he proclaimed his Christian faith loudly and often while agreeing to torture prisoners for information. That practice runs counter to every Biblical tenet for behavior and leadership there is. Ronald Reagan made a big deal about faith but almost never attended church, too.

The only difference between Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is how the press treated their non-attendance. For the latter two, it wasn't even a reportable event. But since Obama was elected in 2008, it's been a nearly-annual topic of concern trolling by Politico, CNN, and the Chicago Tribune.

Last year, the American Spectator led the charge. Being right-wing and all, writer Paul Kengor was not only critical, he was downright judgmental.

Here we have on display one leg of the progressive left’s holy trinity: inclusion, tolerance, and diversity. Or, more accurately, selective inclusion, selective tolerance, and selective diversity. The left includes and tolerates only what it wants to include and tolerate. Christian bakersand florists and photographers who decline to serve gay weddings are not tolerated by the diversity-preaching left. They are harassed, demonized, and literally sued into compliance.

If you want to see religious “inclusion” by Obama, just look at his HHS mandate and its total intolerance of conscientious-objecting religious believers, from Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods to the Catholic Church and the Little Sisters of the Poor. As I write, Team Obama is hellbent on forcing the Little Sisters to pay for abortions.

Draconian contradictions like these, however, don’t register in the liberal mind. Sticking to the “Obama-inclusive-faith theme,” the New York Times quotes Randall Balmer, a liberal scholar, chair of Dartmouth College’s religion department, and author of God in the White House. Balmer says of Obama: “He’s very conscious of the fact that this is a pluralistic nation.”

Besides being a way to "other" President Obama, it's irrelevant. There's no Constitutional mandate saying a President has to go to church. And frankly, after the way they went after Reverend Wright, I'd be cringing if I were a pastor and the President was considering attendance at my church. Who needs every sermon scrutinized out of context for the gotcha quote that proves Obama is a radical with a radical pastor?

Of course it's all noise intended to keep the right wing fundamentalist base hateful and mean. Because that's Christian behavior, don't you know?

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon