President Obama’s church is the Chapel of (Progressive) Democracy

Best of the Web posts a 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times in which Obama defines sin, not along traditional Christian or Muslim lines, but along self-referential lines:

Falsani: Do you believe in sin?

Obama: Yes.

Falsani: What is sin?

Obama: Being out of alignment with my values.

The President, when he made that statement about the measure of sin being his own values, might have had in the back of his head the unspoken qualifier that his values are “Christian.” I doubt it, though, because I have found the definitive doctrine of Obama’s faith. Joan Allen, in the 2000 movie The Contender, recites the doctrinal beliefs of what she calls a church based in “this very chapel of democracy.” I think her church could be more accurately described as The Church of Progressive Political Belief, and it’s clear that President Obama is a devout member.

Here’s the video, followed by a transcript with my interlineations:



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentleman of the Committee. Remarkably enough, it seems that I have some explaining to do. So, let me be absolutely clear.

I stand for a woman’s right to choose. [So does the President, and he stands for making everyone in America, including religious institutions and religious worshippers that are doctrinally opposed to that "right," nevertheless pay for women's choice.]

I stand for the elimination of the death penalty. [This has not been an issue for our president, although he does seem uncommonly fond of drones.]

I stand for a strong and growing armed forces because we must stamp out genocide on this planet, and I believe that that is a cause worth dying for. [Here we have an early articulation of R2P -- responsibility to protect. In the Progressive canon, our country is not worth fighting for and dying for. Genocide -- provided that this on the receiving end of genocide are neither Christians nor Jews -- is the real reason a Progressive United States should have a military. In this regard, it's ironic that president Obama not only presided over two wars, but started a third.]

I stand for seeing every gun taken out of every home. Period. [Three words: Fast and Furious.]

I stand for making the selling cigarettes to our youth a federal offense. [Because, really, who needs education, the marketplace of ideas, and free will.]

I stand for term limits and campaign reform. [Obama hasn't said much about term limits, but he's made it clear that his idea of campaign reform is to stifle corporate speech, despite the fact that corporations are aggregations and citizens and pay taxes; and that his personal contribution to campaign reform is to campaign more than any other president all the other candidates since Nixon put together.]
And, Mr. Chairman, I stand for the separation of Church and State, and the reason that I stand for that is the same reason that I believe our forefathers did. It is not there to protect religion from the grasp of government but to protect our government from the grasp of religious fanaticism. [The Founders could not have made it more clear that Freedom of Religion, which is contained in the First Amendment, protests religion from government, not vice versa. The Amendment's language is unequivocal: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." There's nothing in there about the fact that no religious person can serve in Congress or have a say in America's government.]

Now, I may be an atheist, but that does not mean I do not go to church. I do go to church. The church I go to is the one that emancipated the slaves [that would be the Republican sect of the church], that gave women the right to vote, that gave us every freedom that we hold dear. My church is this very Chapel of Democracy that we sit in together, and I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this church. [And there you have it -- President Obama's creed writ large: "I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this (Progressive) church.]


SOURCE: Bookworm Room on Apr 30 2012 at 3:31 pm