Obama Politics

Link: A Date with Disaster -- Presbyterians Approve Homosexual Clergy.

Taken together, these changes represent a disaster for this church. In capitulating to the demand that homosexuality be normalized, the church turned its back on the Bible, on its own tradition, and on the protests and prayers of its members who would, of all things, expect their ministers to exhibit "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness." Just reflect for a moment about what the removal of those words really means. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA has just proposed to define its own denomination as a church for which those words no longer make sense.

Faith In Public Life - Blogging Faith

Obama's Twisted Theology

Link: The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

For years progressives have dreamed of getting Evangelicals to connect with anti-poverty and environmental programs. Obama may be the one to do it. As Ross says, he is just better than McCain at framing his progressive policies as part of a moral mission. McCain would be foolish to counter this by using the Rev. Wright card. Many religious conservatives know what it is like to have a pastor called out as an “extremist” and they recognize this as a technique of their liberal enemies.

Link: Evangelical movement touts 'Jesus for president' - CNN.com.

After the speech in an interview with CNN, Claiborne said, "This is not about going left or right, this is about going deeper and trying to understand together. Rather than endorse candidates, we ask them to endorse what is at the heart of Jesus and that is the poor or the peacemakers and when we see that then we'll get behind them."

Link: The Washington Monthly.

McCain's transformation is so complete that at a recent town-hall meeting in Nashville, when asked to name an author who inspired him, the candidate — who once described televangelists of the Jerry Falwell genus as "agents of intolerance" — put none other than Joel Osteen at the top of his list. "He's inspirational," McCain said. Standing at the meeting, I didn't write Osteen's name down in my notebook — apparently because my brain refused on some level to accept that McCain had actually said it. Of all the vile, fake, lying-ass, money-grubbing shyster scumbags on the face of this planet, there is perhaps none more loathsome than Osteen, a human haircut with plastic baseball-size teeth who has made a fortune selling the appalling only-in-America idea that terrestrial greed is actually a form of Christian devotion.

Link: The Associated Press: Bulgarian extremists attack gay parade with rocks.

Gays face widespread hostility in Bulgaria and opposition to Saturday's parade has been fierce. The far-right Bulgarian National Union had called for "open resistance" to the gay pride parade with a campaign featuring posters that say: "Be Intolerant, Be Normal." Bulgaria's influential Orthodox Church said the march should be banned as it undermines the country's Christian traditions.

Link: Presbyterian leaders OK gay clergy - Los Angeles Times.

But the California-Pacific Annual Conference, which represents 82,000 Methodists in Southern California, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan, passed its resolution supporting gay and lesbian couples who marry. The conference also opposed the November ballot initiative in California that would ban such marriages. "We wanted to communicate to the lesbian, gay and bisexual community in our conference that not all Methodists are of a common mind," said the Rev. Frank Wulf of the United University Church, a congregation on the USC campus that also serves Presbyterians. "We want to affirm same-sex couples who choose to marry and some of our pastors who choose knowing that it is in violation of United Methodist Church law to participate in those marriages."

Link: Evangelicals Are Crucial to Winning the 2008 Election | Print Article | Newsweek.com.

Alan Jacobs, 49, an English professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, says the younger evangelicals he teaches tell him, "I have a very deep and instinctive attachment to the pro-life movement, and I don't think I'm going to be able to vote for someone who holds the views that Obama has, but I don't see how I can vote for John McCain. So I'm kind of stuck."

Link: The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

If [Obama] moved to the center on abortion, a knowledgeable religion journalist remarked to me last week, he could win half of evangelicals under 40. But can he move to the center on abortion - by flip-flopping on partial-birth abortion, say, while making a big deal about embracing the (largely-symbolic) abortion-reduction plan being pressed by Democrats for Life -- after a bruising primary campaign in which he barely beat out a feminist icon with unimpeachable pro-choice bona fides? I've assumed that the answer is no and no again, not least because he's already ahead in the polls, and doesn't need to look for potentially gamechanging maneuvers that might blow up in his face. But if Obama wants a historic mandate, rather than a narrow win -- if he wants to cut the heart out of the GOP coalition and leave the Republicans for dead -- then breaking with his party's abortion orthodoxy to go hard after the evangelical vote is one obvious way to do it.