{"id":232,"date":"2008-01-08T13:09:29","date_gmt":"2008-01-08T13:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/01\/obama-become-his-partys-secula.html"},"modified":"2008-01-08T13:09:29","modified_gmt":"2008-01-08T13:09:29","slug":"obama-become-his-partys-secula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/01\/obama-become-his-partys-secula.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama Becomes his Party’s Secular Preacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"obama3.jpg\"With Mike Huckabee\u2019s dramatic win in Iowa and his impressive national poll numbers, the closest thing the Republican Party has to a frontrunner at the moment appears to be a Baptist preacher. But is another kind of preacher leading the Democratic presidential field?
\nStopping by a packed Barack Obama rally last night in Rochester, New Hampshire, God-o-Meter noticed that fans standing behind the candidate on stage waved homemade poster board signs proclaiming \u201cIn Obama We Trust\u201d and \u201cBelieve.\u201d The local activist who introduced Obama said, \u201cWhat I really like is his ability to uplift people.\u201d And Obama opened his stump speech this way: \u201cOver the next 20 minutes or so, you\u2019re going to see a light shine down the from the ceiling\u2026 you\u2019re going to have an epiphany.\u201d
\nBy the end of the evening, many of the rally\u2019s estimated 1,000 attendees did, according to an informal God-o-Meter\u2019s survey. \u201cHe\u2019s incredibly exciting and charismatic,\u201d said Elizabeth Brooks, 57. \u201cI believe in what he\u2019s saying.
\n\u201cWe heard Hillary yesterday, and she has the same message,\u201d said Anton Becker, 67, leaving the event with his wife. \u201cBut Obama is much more inspirational.\u201d
\nIndeed, God-o-Meter would go so far to say that Obama, peddling his message that hope matters more than experience, has become the Democrats\u2019 secular preacher, his party\u2019s rough equivalent to Huckabee, who\u2019s been criticized for campaigning to be \u201cpastor-in-chief.\u201d
\nThere are blatant religious overtones to Obama\u2019s campaign. Jim Wallis calls him \u201cvirtually a public theologian\u2026 articulating the relationship between faith and politics.<\/a>\u201d During last night\u2019s rally in Rochester, Obama opened his speech with an anecdote about his stint organizing churches in Chicago to respond to the closing of steel mills there.
\nBut that\u2019s not what God-o-Meter is talking about. Rather, GOM sees Obama preaching a secular religion of hope, a post-partisan deliverance from the nation\u2019s current moment of bitter ideological stalemate. The message includes broad liberal goals like ending the Iraq war and restoring America\u2019s high international standing, but is decidedly short on specific policy prescriptions.
\nThe Obama faithful don\u2019t seem to mind. When God-o-Meter asked a dozen attendees at last night\u2019s rally why they supported Obama, none mentioned a specific issue\u2014or even a general one. At a Huckabee event earlier that morning, by contrast, supporters mentioned the former Arkansas governor\u2019s pro-life views or his promise to help the middle class as secondary reasons for supporting him, even while acknowledging Huckabee\u2019s \u201cChristian values\u201d as the prime reason.
\nOn her way out of last night\u2019s event, 41-year-old Sandy Becker said she backs Obama because \u201che gives us something to hope for.\u201d Asked if there were any specific issues undergirding her support, the Montessori school owner said that \u201cObama can cut across all issues.\u201d
\nObama himself wouldn\u2019t disagree. \u201cLet me talk about hope,\u201d he said near the end of last night\u2019s speech. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking about hope so much I\u2019ve been derided for it. Lately some folks have said Obama is so idealist, so na\u00efve\u2014he\u2019s a hopemonger.\u201d
\nHopemonger. Isn\u2019t that just another name for minister?<\/p>\n


\n9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Mike Huckabee\u2019s dramatic win in Iowa and his impressive national poll numbers, the closest thing the Republican Party has to a frontrunner at the moment appears to be a Baptist preacher. But is another kind of preacher leading the Democratic presidential field? Stopping by a packed Barack Obama rally last night in Rochester, New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"\nObama Becomes his Party's Secular Preacher - God-O-Meter<\/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\/godometer\/2008\/01\/obama-become-his-partys-secula.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama Becomes his Party's Secular Preacher - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With Mike Huckabee\u2019s dramatic win in Iowa and his impressive national poll numbers, the closest thing the Republican Party has to a frontrunner at the moment appears to be a Baptist preacher. 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