{"id":289,"date":"2008-11-17T11:23:02","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T11:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/christian-gate-keepers-declare.html"},"modified":"2008-11-17T11:23:02","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T11:23:02","slug":"christian-gate-keepers-declare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/christian-gate-keepers-declare.html","title":{"rendered":"Christian Gate Keepers Declare Obama Not Christian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crunchy Con’s Rod Dreher has joined with Joe Carter to declare that Obama is not a Christian<\/a>. What do you think? \u00a0Do you have to believe everything in the Nicene Creed to be a Christian? \u00a0Is the Nicene Creed open to interpretation? \u00a0By heterdox Christology, does Dreher imply that there is only one way\u00a0Christians\u00a0have approached the divinity of Jesus? What do people gain by saying that another person is religiously illegitimate? \u00a0I wonder…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From Dreher:<\/a> \u00a0In the last post, I highlighted Michael Brendan Dougherty’s contention that Americans are theologically illiterate. Well, here’s Exhibit A: a fascinating, and illuminating, controversy started byJoe Carter, who questioned whether or not Barack Obama is a Christian.<\/a>\u00a0As a statement of minimal Christian orthodoxy — that is, what it is necessary to believe to be a Christian — the Nicene Creed is as basic as it comes. And yet, in a 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani,\u00a0published in full the other day by Steve here on Bnet<\/a>, Obama apparently professed a heterodox Christology:<\/p>\n

FALSANI: Who’s Jesus to you?<\/p>\n

(He laughs nervously)<\/p>\n

OBAMA:
Right.<\/p>\n

Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he’s also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.<\/p>\n

And he’s also a wonderful teacher. I think it’s important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Unless Obama was being incredibly and uncharacteristically inarticulate, this is heterodox. You cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense and deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. You just can’t.<\/p>\n

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

Crunchy Con’s Rod Dreher has joined with Joe Carter to declare that Obama is not a Christian. What do you think? \u00a0Do you have to believe everything in the Nicene Creed to be a Christian? \u00a0Is the Nicene Creed open to interpretation? \u00a0By heterdox Christology, does Dreher imply that there is only one way\u00a0Christians\u00a0have approached…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08"],"yoast_head":"\nChristian Gate Keepers Declare Obama Not Christian - Progressive Revival<\/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\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/christian-gate-keepers-declare.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christian Gate Keepers Declare Obama Not Christian - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Crunchy Con’s Rod Dreher has joined with Joe Carter to declare that Obama is not a Christian. What do you think? \u00a0Do you have to believe everything in the Nicene Creed to be a Christian? \u00a0Is the Nicene Creed open to interpretation? \u00a0By heterdox Christology, does Dreher imply that there is only one way\u00a0Christians\u00a0have approached…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/christian-gate-keepers-declare.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-17T11:23:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul Raushenbush\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christian Gate Keepers Declare Obama Not Christian - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/christian-gate-keepers-declare.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christian Gate Keepers Declare Obama Not Christian - Progressive Revival","og_description":"Crunchy Con’s Rod Dreher has joined with Joe Carter to declare that Obama is not a Christian. 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Paul B. Raushenbush is the moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University. .An ordained American Baptist minister, Rev. Raushenbush speaks and preaches at colleges, churches and institutes around the country including the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., The Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and the New America Foundation. Rev. Raushenbush has served at Seattle First Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Columbia University and as College and Young Adult Minister at The Riverside Church in New York City. He has appeared on ABC World News Tonight and is a repeated guest on CNN. He has been quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post and is a contributing editor for Beliefnet.com. His first book, Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI) was released in the Fall of 2004. He is the editor of the 100th Anniversary edition of Walter Rauschenbusch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book Christianity and the Social Crisis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c In the 21st Century (HarperOne). His work at Princeton includes strengthening the interfaith community on campus. He is the Co-Director of the Program on Religion, Diplomacy and International Relations at The Liechtenstein Institute on Self Determination at Princeton University. Rev. Raushenbush studied religion at Macalester College before attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he graduated with distinction.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/praushenbush"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}