{"id":1174,"date":"2010-08-20T12:47:53","date_gmt":"2010-08-20T12:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/08\/the-faith-of-barack-obama.html"},"modified":"2010-08-20T12:47:53","modified_gmt":"2010-08-20T12:47:53","slug":"the-faith-of-barack-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/08\/the-faith-of-barack-obama.html","title":{"rendered":"The Faith of Barack Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"obam.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Despite repeated denials,  there are still many conservative persons, including many conservative Christians who think the President of the United States is a Muslim.  One can only imagine that his recent remarks about the proposed mosque in N.Y. near ground zero will only further fuel such opinions.  There has been a recent Pew Research poll done on opinions about Obama’s faith—– here is the link to an article about it. See what you think.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.politicsdaily.com\/2010\/08\/19\/obamas-religion-still-at-issue-for-many-americans-a-fifth-say\/?ncid=AOLDSN00280000000031<\/b><\/p>\n

As for my opinion, I think that Barack Obama is most certainly a self-professed African American Christian.  I am in no position to judge what is in the man’s heart so I must take what he says, and what various of his friends like Rick Warren, say as the truth unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary, which there definitely is not. <\/p>\n

What bothers me about the persistence of this sort of discussion is that it involves fear-mongering and all sorts of emotive rhetoric without any sound basis in facts.  If a person does not like the President’s politics, that is one thing.  The attempt to link his political views to his religious views is a two edged sword.  There are plenty, indeed I would say millions of devout Christians in American who mostly share Obama’s political views.  Does this make them somehow, not Christian?   Surely not.   So more circumspection is called for in making pejorative statements about Obama’s Christian faith, based on pure suspicions and a dislike for his politics. Let the vituperative ones take the log out of their own eyes first, before trying to extract the perceived speck in someone else’s eye.  <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite repeated denials,  there are still many conservative persons, including many conservative Christians who think the President of the United States is a Muslim.  One can only imagine that his recent remarks about the proposed mosque in N.Y. near ground zero will only further fuel such opinions.  There has been a recent Pew Research poll…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Faith of Barack Obama - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/08\/the-faith-of-barack-obama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Faith of Barack Obama - 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}