In The Days

• News Date: 7/7/08
• Source: Christian ADC

Cathleen Falsani, the author of The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People, interviewed Barack Obama about his faith March 27, 2004, a few days after he clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won.

Perilous Times

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
—2Timothy 3:1-2a

”But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”
—2Timothy 3:13

Because of the intense interest in Obama’s faith, she has made the entire interview available uncut and in its entirety.

What emerges is a man who is not comfortable discussing spiritual matters, and is a spiritually confused theological eclectic. He is clearly not a Christian by any biblical, historic measure. He repeatedly affirms then denies Christ, says he believes but is filled with doubt.

Obama’s faith reflects the Universalistic beliefs of his grandparents. The fact that he felt comfortable in Trinity United Church of Christ, one of the most radical churches in one of the most liberal denominations, is entirely understandable.

When Falsini asks, “What do you believe?” Obama effectively calls himself a Buddhist, agnostic, Muslim, Jewish, Christian. If you read the whole interview you will see a person who seems to be trying very hard to not take a stand on the Christian faith, yet at the same time tries to identify as a Christian.

It is only fair to take Obama at his word and in context. Please take the time to read the following lengthy article, after all, he might be the next President and leader of the free world. My only purpose is only to answer the question, is Obama a Christian according to biblical, historic standards? I have added my parenthetical comments in bold italics.

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(GG is Cathleen Falsani’s alias, an abbreviation for “God Girl”)

Interview with State Sen. Barack Obama;

3:30 p.m., Saturday March 27, Café Baci, 330 S. Michigan Avenue

Me: decaf

He: alone, on time, grabs a Naked juice protein shake

GG: What do you believe?
OBAMA: I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith.
On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences. I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10. My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim. And I’d say, probably, intellectually I’ve drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith.

(Obama says he is a Christian, but one that is influenced by other religions. This is a recurrent theme. Obama either does not see or will not affirm that Christianity is superior to or contrary to other religions. The Christian confession is that “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”)

(A patron stops and says, “Congratulations,” shakes his hand. “Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you.”)

So, I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there’s an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.

(Obama denies the uniqueness of Christ and the Christian faith. He reduces Christianity to only one of “many paths.” Christians confess that there is only one name under heaven whereby you must be saved, Jesus Christ.)

And so, part of my project in life was probably to spend the first 40 years of my life figuring out what I did believe – I’m 42 now – and it’s not that I had it all completely worked out, but I’m spending a lot of time now trying to apply what I believe and trying to live up to those values.

(Obama is trying to be a good person. This is commendable as far as it goes, but it is not Christian. Christianity first requires repentance from sin and a belief in Christ alone for salvation which produces a grateful obedience to Christ’s commandments.)

GG: Have you always been a Christian?
OBAMA: I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.
GG: Any particular flavor?
OBAMA: No. My grandparents who were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. This was at a time when I think the Methodists felt slightly superior to the Baptists. And by the time I was born, they were, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church.

(Obama was raised by his grandparents and seems to have adopted their faith, not the Christian faith.)

So, my mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We’d go to church for Easter. She wasn’t a church lady.

As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn’t particularly, he wasn’t a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you’d hear the prayer call.

(Obama was a Muslim student as determined by his patrimony. He did attend a Catholic school, but he was also required to study the Koran.)

So I don’t think as a child we were, or I had a structured religious education. But my mother was deeply spiritual person, and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world’s religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view always was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good.

(Obama has accepted the Oprah Winfrey definition of what constitutes being “spiritual.” Any one who discusses religion is spiritual. The Bible distinguishes between the carnal person who is unregenerated and who does not know anything about spiritual matters, and the spiritual person who is alive spiritually, having been born again by the Holy Spirit. All mankind is born spiritually dead in sin. Only faith in Christ can make you alive).

And, so that, I think, was what I carried with me through college. I probably didn’t get started getting active in church activities until I moved to Chicago.

The way I came to Chicago in 1985 was that I was interested in community organizing and I was inspired by the Civil Rights movement. And the idea that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. And there was a group of churches out on the South Side of Chicago that had come together to form an organization to try to deal with the devastation of steel plants that had closed. And didn’t have much money, but felt that if they formed an organization and hired somebody to organize them to work on issues that affected their community, that it would strengthen the church and also strengthen the community.

So they hired me, for $13,000 a year. The princely sum. And I drove out here and I didn’t know anybody and started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job training programs, or afterschool programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communites.

This would be in Roseland, West Pullman, Altgeld Gardens, far South Side working class and lower income communities.

And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened because I’d be spending an enormous amount of time with church ladies, sort of surrogate mothers and fathers and everybody I was working with was 50 or 55 or 60, and here I was a 23-year-old kid running around.

I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and it’s importance in the community.

And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.

So that, one of the churches I met, or one of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church.

(This is not a Christian conversion. A true Christian comes to Christ acknowledging he is a sinner and deserving of God’s just wrath. One flees to Christ in order to be saved from sin and its just consequences. One must humbly admit they cannot be saved by pleasing God by any amount of “good works.” By grace you are saved through faith… not of works, lest any man should boast.)

GG: Did you actually go up for an altar call?
OBAMA: Yes. Absolutely. It was a daytime service, during a daytime service. And it was a powerful moment. Because, it was powerful for me because it not only confirmed my faith, it not only gave shape to my faith, but I think, also, allowed me to connect the work I had been pursuing with my faith.

(Walking to the front of a church, baptism or any other rite, does not make anyone a Christian. You must be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit and confess faith in Christ to be saved.)

GG: How long ago?
OBAMA: 16, 17 years ago 1987 or 88.

(Every Christian that has been born again as an adult can look to a very specific time. Not a two year time span.)

GG: So you got yourself born again?
OBAMA: Yeah, although I don’t, I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.

(So Obama says he is born again but he immediately wants to make it clear that he is suspicious of theological truth that under girds his need to be born again. No true Christian says I am born again, but I don’t take it seriously.)

I’m a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it’s best comes with a big dose of doubt. I’m suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.

(Obama is suspicious of certainty, but he is certain that his suspicion is justifiable. This is irrational gibberish.)

I think that, particularly as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.

(Obama admits it is because of his public image he is not willing to affirm the exclusive claims of Christ. Jesus said, “If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father in heaven.”)

GG: Do you still attend Trinity?

OBAMA: Yep. Every week. 11 oclock service. Ever been there? Good service. I actually wrote a book called Dreams from My Father, it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity.

(For Obama, worship at Trinity is largely about race. Trinity boasts that it is an African Centered Church. The New Testament teaches that we are to be Christ centered and there is no racial distinctions between those who are Christians.)

GG: Do you pray often?

OBAMA: Uh, yeah, I guess I do. Its’ not formal, me getting on my knees. I think I have an ongoing conversation with God. I think throughout the day, I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why am I doing it.

One of the interesting things about being in public life is there are constantly these pressures being placed on you from different sides. To be effective, you have to be able to listen to a variety of points of view, synthesize viewpoints. You also have to know when to be just a strong advocate, and push back against certain people or views that you think aren’t right or don’t serve your constituents.

And so, the biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I’m having internally. I’m measuring my actions against that inner voice that for me at least is audible, is active, it tells me where I think I’m on track and where I think I’m off track.

It’s interesting particularly now after this election, comes with it a lot of celebrity. And I always think of politics as having two sides. There’s a vanity aspect to politics, and then there’s a substantive part of politics. Now you need some sizzle with the steak to be effective, but I think it’s easy to get swept up in the vanity side of it, the desire to be liked and recognized and important. It’s important for me throughout the day to measure and to take stock and to say, now, am I doing this because I think it’s advantageous to me politically, or because I think it’s the right thing to do? Am I doing this to get my name in the papers or am I doing this because it’s necessary to accomplish my motives.

(Obama seems to be trying to say he tries to listens to his conscience, which is good if his conscience has been instructed by God’s Word. Because man is fallen, our conscience is fallible. It can be weak or ill informed. Obama does not appeal to scripture for moral reasoning, but to inward feelings. This is not Christian.)

GG: Checking for altruism?
OBAMA: Yeah. I mean, something like it. Looking for, … It’s interesting, the most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I’m talking to a group and I’m saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I’m just being glib or clever.
GG: What’s that power? Is it the Holy Spirit? God?

OBAMA: Well, I think it’s the power of the recognition of God, or the recognition of a larger truth that is being shared between me and an audience. That’s something you learn watching ministers, quite a bit. What they call the Holy Spirit. They want the Holy Spirit to come down before they’re preaching, right? Not to try to intellectualize it but what I see is there are moments that happen within a sermon where the minister gets out of his ego and is speaking from a deeper source. And it’s powerful.

There are also times when you can see the ego getting in the way. Where the minister is performing and clearly straining for applause or an Amen. And those are distinct moments. I think those former moments are sacred.

(Obama is very uniformed about the person and work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the interaction of people, i.e. the preacher and congregation. All rhetoric must be judged by biblical standards, too. If the preacher is speaking from his heart and the congregation is excited and agrees, if they are in error it is not the Holy Spirit leading them to contradict biblical truth. The spirit bears witness to sin and righteousness and judgment and testifies of Christ.)

GG: Who’s Jesus to you?
(He laughs nervously)
(Christians do not get nervous when asked about their Lord and Savior, they unflinchingly bear witness to his saving power and grace.)

OBAMA: Right. 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. 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.

(Even the demons believe that Jesus is an historical figure, but they are damned! He is the risen, living Lord. Jesus is not “a” bridge in the Christian faith, he is “the” bridge for all who might be saved of all mankind. Jesus is not simply a means of us” reaching higher,” like some motivational speaker. He did not come simply to teach, but to die as a substitute for sinners.)

GG: Is Jesus someone who you feel you have a regular connection with now, a personal connection with in your life?

OBAMA: Yeah. Yes. I think some of the things I talked about earlier are addressed through, are channeled through my Christian faith and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

(Obama is apparently referring to the other religions he mentioned earlier, his eastern, Muslim and Jewish beliefs. So it sounds like he runs these other beliefs through his Jesus filter. Unfortunately, he has let these other beliefs control his view of Jesus, not vise versa.)

GG: Have you read the Bible?
OBAMA: Absolutely. I read it not as regularly as I would like. These days I don’t have much time for reading or reflection, period.

GG: Do you try to take some time for whatever, meditation prayer reading?

OBAMA: I’ll be honest with you, I used to all the time, in a fairly disciplined way. But during the course of this campaign, I don’t. And I probably need to and would like to, but that’s where that internal monologue, or dialogue I think supplants my opportunity to read and reflect in a structured way these days. It’s much more sort of as I’m going through the day trying to take stock and take a moment here and a moment there to take stock, why am I here, how does this connect with a larger sense of purpose.

GG: Do you have people in your life that you look to for guidance?

OBAMA: Well, my pastor is certainly someone who I have an enormous amount of respect for. I have a number of friends who are ministers. Reverend Meeks is a close friend and colleague of mine in the state Senate. Father Michael Pfleger is a dear friend, and somebody I interact with closely.

(Obama has been shaped theologically by one of the most radical ministers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in one of the most liberal denominations, the United Church of Christ.)

GG: Those two will keep you on your toes.

OBAMA: And they’re good friends. Because both of them are in the public eye, there are ways we can all reflect on what’s happening to each of us in ways that are useful. I think they can help me, they can appreciate certain specific challenges that I go through as a public figure.

GG: Jack Ryan [Obama’s Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race at the time] said talking about your faith is fraught with peril for a public figure.

OBAMA: Which is why you generally will not see me spending a lot of time talking about it on the stump.

(Obama has made a calculated effort to do just the opposite in this campaign.)

Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.

As I said before, in my own public policy, I’m very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics.

(Obama is certain that his religious values need to be expressed politically.)

Now, that’s different from a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values that inform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.

(Where does Obama get his values? Apparently not from the scripture, so why doesn’t he just say that he wants a radically secular government and secular values.)

A standard line in my stump speech during this campaign is that my politics are informed by a belief that we’re all connected. That if there’s a child on the South Side of Chicago that can’t read, that makes a difference in my life even if it’s not my own child. If there’s a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that’s struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it’s not my grandparent. And if there’s an Arab American family that’s being rounded up by John Ashcroft without the benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

I can give religious expression to that. I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, we are all children of God. Or I can express it in secular terms. But the basic premise remains the same. I think sometimes Democrats have made the mistake of shying away from a conversation about values for fear that they sacrifice the important value of tolerance. And I don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.

GG: Do you think it’s wrong for people to want to know about a civic leader’s spirituality?

OBAMA: I don’t’ think it’s wrong. I think that political leaders are subject to all sorts of vetting by the public, and this can be a component of that. I think that I am disturbed by, let me put it this way: I think there is an enormous danger on the part of public figures to rationalize or justify their actions by claiming God’s mandate.

(Obama does not say I have no certainty about what’s right, he claims that homosexuality and abortion are good. The question is, by what standard? Certainly not Christian principles.)

I think there is this tendency that I don’t think is healthy for public figures to wear religion on their sleeve as a means to insulate themselves from criticism, or dialogue with people who disagree with them.

(Not his position now as he actively seeks to present himself as a Christian.)

GG: The conversation stopper, when you say you’re a Christian and leave it at that.

OBAMA: Where do you move forward with that? This is something that I’m sure I’d have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and prostelytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.

GG You don’t believe that?

OBAMA: I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.

Part of the reason I think it’s always difficult for public figures to talk about this is that the nature of politics is that you want to have everybody like you and project the best possible traits onto you. Oftentimes that’s by being as vague as possible, or appealing to the lowest common denominators. The more specific and detailed you are on issues as personal and fundamental as your faith, the more potentially dangerous it is.

(Obama just invalidated Christ’s death and resurrection, the Great Commission and 2000 years of Christian evangelism and missions. Believing on Christ is dangerous, being an open minded cynic like Obama is the best public position.)

GG: Do you ever have people who know you’re a Christian question a particular stance you take on an issue, how can you be a Christian and …

OBAMA: Like the right to choose. I haven’t been challenged in those direct ways. And to that extent, I give the public a lot of credit. I’m always stuck by how much common sense the American people have. They get confused sometimes, watch FoxNews or listen to talk radio. That’s dangerous sometimes. But generally, Americans are tolerant and I think recognize that faith is a personal thing, and they may feel very strongly about an issue like abortion or gay marriage, but if they discuss it with me as an elected official they will discuss it with me in those terms and not, say, as ‘you call yourself a Christian.’ I cannot recall that ever happening.

(Obama is now going to have to try to answer these questions, but he can not reconcile his radical liberal point of view with biblical Christianity.)

GG: Do you get questions about your faith?

OBAMA: Obviously as an African American politician rooted in the African American community, I spend a lot of time in the black church. I have no qualms in those settings in participating fully in those services and celebrating my God in that wonderful community that is the black church.

(he pauses)

But I also try to be . . . Rarely in those settings do people come up to me and say, what are your beliefs. They are going to presume, and rightly so. Although they may presume a set of doctrines that I subscribe to that I don’t necessarily subscribe to.

But I don’t think that’s unique to me. I think that each of us when we walk into our church or mosque or synagogue are interpreting that experience in different ways, are reading scriptures in different ways and are arriving at our own understanding at different ways and in different phases.

I don’t know a healthy congregation or an effective minister who doesn’t recognize that. If all it took was someone proclaiming I believe Jesus Christ and that he died for my sins, and that was all there was to it, people wouldn’t have to keep coming to church, would they.

(Obama makes an irrational assertion that everyone gets to arrive at his own conclusions regardless of the clear teachings of scripture. The end of the Christian faith is not trusting in Christ alone as Savior, it is the sure foundation and the beginning of sound doctrine.)

GG: Do you believe in heaven?

OBAMA: Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings?

GG: A place spiritually you go to after you die?

OBAMA: What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.

When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see in them that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.

(Obama denies certainty about things that the scriptures make very clear, it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment. Heaven awaits all those whose name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. Eternal judgment in hell awaits all others.)

GG: Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA: Yes.
GG: What is sin?
OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.
GG: What happens if you have sin in your life?
OBAMA: I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.

(Obama denies objective, transcendent, unchanging moral standards that come from God, only his own inward sense of right and wrong. Note Obama denies eternal consequences for sin, therefore Jesus died for nothing.)

GG: Where do you find spiritual inspiration? Music, nature, literature, people, a conduit you plug into?

OBAMA: There are so many. Nothing is more powerful than the black church experience. A good choir and a good sermon in the black church, it’s pretty hard not to be move and be transported. I can be transported by watching a good performance of Hamlet, or reading Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, or listening to Miles Davis.

GG: Is there something that you go back to as a touchstone, a book, a particular piece of music, a place …

OBAMA: As I said before, in my own sort of mental library, the Civil Rights movement has a powerful hold on me. It’s a point in time where I think heaven and earth meet. Because it’s a moment in which a collective faith transforms everything. So when I read Gandhi or I read King or I read certain passages of Abraham Lincoln and I think about those times where people’s values are tested, I think those inspire me.

GG: What are you doing when you feel the most centered, the most aligned spiritually?

OBAMA: I think I already described it. It’s when I’m being true to myself. And that can happen in me making a speech or it can happen in me playing with my kids, or it can happen in a small interaction with a security guard in a building when I’m recognizing them and exchanging a good word.

GG: Is there someone you would look to as an example of how not to do it?

OBAMA: Bin Laden. (grins broadly)

GG: An example of a role model, who combined everything you said you want to do in your life, and your faith?

OBAMA: I think Gandhi is a great example of a profoundly spiritual man who acted and risked everything on behalf of those values but never slipped into intolerance or dogma. He seemed to always maintain an air of doubt about him. I think Dr. King, and Lincoln. Those three are good examples for me of people who applied their faith to a larger canvas without allowing that faith to metastasize into something that is hurtful.

(Obama worships at the altar of doubt. The NT declares it was written so that you might know that you have eternal life in Jesus Christ.)

GG: Can we go back to that morning service in 1987 or 88 — when you have a moment that you can go back to that as an epiphany…

OBAMA: It wasn’t an epiphany. It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them. For me it was probably because there is a certain self-consciousness that I possess as somebody with probably too much book learning, and also a very polyglot background.

GG: It wasn’t like a moment where you finally got it? It was a symbol of that decision?

OBAMA: Exactly. I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me.

(Born again Christians do not describe conversion as a symbolic act of a growing faith. It is a moment in which God’s grace is realized and one is brought out of spiritual darkness into the light.)

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