{"id":657,"date":"2009-01-22T15:28:37","date_gmt":"2009-01-22T15:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/buddhism-chopped-liver.html"},"modified":"2009-01-22T15:28:37","modified_gmt":"2009-01-22T15:28:37","slug":"buddhism-chopped-liver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/buddhism-chopped-liver.html","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s Obama Got Against Buddhism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/buddhists%20for%20obama%20button.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"buddhists for obama button.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/01\/buddhists for obama button-thumb-250x250-2976.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>We hear at Beliefnet are accustomed to thinking of the world&#8217;s major religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Faiths\/Buddhism\/index.aspx\">Buddhism<\/a>.<br \/>\nIn his inaugural address, Obama went four for five, mentioning Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and (<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/obamas-religious-language-in-t.html\">signficantly<\/a>) &#8220;non believers.&#8221;   No Buddhism.<br \/>\nAt the National Prayer Service Wednesday at the National Cathedral, twenty different clergy participated &#8212; but no Buddhists.   (The group included: Hindu, Muslim, reform Jew,  conservative Jew,  orthodox Jew, Episcopalian, two Catholics, Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Evangelicas, Greek Othodox, Methodist, Reformed.)<br \/>\nAccording to <a href=\"http:\/\/religions.pewforum.org\/affiliations\">the Pew Religion Forum survey,<\/a> there are more Buddhists in America than Hindus, Muslims or Greek Orthodox. So why didn&#8217;t the make the cut?  My guess is that Buddhists are not associated with a clearly identifiable ethnic group (Hindus=Indians) or political bloc.  They&#8217;re just a significant spiritual category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We hear at Beliefnet are accustomed to thinking of the world&#8217;s major religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. In his inaugural address, Obama went four for five, mentioning Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and (signficantly) &#8220;non believers.&#8221; No Buddhism. At the National Prayer Service Wednesday at the National Cathedral, twenty different clergy participated &#8212;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What&#039;s Obama Got Against Buddhism? - Steven Waldman<\/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\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/buddhism-chopped-liver.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What&#039;s Obama Got Against Buddhism? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We hear at Beliefnet are accustomed to thinking of the world&#8217;s major religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. In his inaugural address, Obama went four for five, mentioning Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and (signficantly) &#8220;non believers.&#8221; No Buddhism. At the National Prayer Service Wednesday at the National Cathedral, twenty different clergy participated &#8212;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/buddhism-chopped-liver.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-22T15:28:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What's Obama Got Against Buddhism? - Steven Waldman","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\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/01\/buddhism-chopped-liver.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What's Obama Got Against Buddhism? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"We hear at Beliefnet are accustomed to thinking of the world&#8217;s major religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. In his inaugural address, Obama went four for five, mentioning Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and (signficantly) &#8220;non believers.&#8221; No Buddhism. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}