PublicChristian

Douglas W. Kmiec is a prominent Republican and committed Roman Catholic. He was head of the Office of Legal Counsel for Presidents Reagan and the first Bush.

He became notorious for coming out in support of then-Senator Obama’s campaign for the Presidency, and for publishing things like the following.

He speaks of “the Catholic tradition” as

not just
condemnation of the evil of abortion,
but also as
the building up of a society

where those at risk of falling or disregarding this boundary will be far less like to do so because of the tangible help of their neighbor, inspired by the witness of Christ rendered both personally and through government. [p45]

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Former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright said this in an email I got this week.

Every new president inherits headaches, but President Obama has inherited an entire emergency room.

Our struggle to reclaim our standing in the world has been challenging, but we are making progress. Together, we will need to continue to speak up, fight back, and give President Obama the support he needs to succeed.

The President told David Letterman last night that we were losing 700,000 jobs a month when he became President. And that’s just in one bay of a pretty large emergency room.

And Connie kept saying, while Obama was on Letterman, that he just always seems so calm, so reasonable, and not at all “full of himself.”

Sort of like a grown-up should be!

Or a Christian.
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In January of 2008 Barack Obama gave a powerful speech (sermon) on the meaning of Martin Luther King Jr. for America today. This was at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King was raised and his father was the pastor.

Obama directly confronts fundamental moral problems rampant in American society and politics. (I’ve added some emphases to the print version.)

I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper;

And he brings the issue home to each of us. » Continue Reading »

Here’s Obama on the significance of the Gospel:

In an interview with Christianity Today magazine, Obama said this about his decision to accept Christ,

What was intellectual
and what was emotional joined,
and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ,
that he died for our sins,
that through him we could achieve eternal life

- but also that, through good works
we could find order and meaning here on Earth
and transcend our limits
and our flaws and our foibles

- I found that powerful.

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Some Biblical perspective.

First, our hope has to be higher than human society, politics, government, churches, or wars.

Psalm 146:

3 Do not put your trust in princes,
    in mortal men, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
    on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6 the Maker of heaven and earth,
    the sea, and everything in them—
    the LORD, who remains faithful forever.

Second, it matters greatly to the Divine Spirit what kinds of values we support.

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[This is lifted verbatim from BiPM's column this morning. Emphases are mine.]

They said his name’s too foreign and exotic. It isn’t.
They said he’s too young. He isn’t.
They said he’s a scary Muslim terrorist. He isn’t.
They said he was sworn in on the Koran. He wasn’t.
They said he’s not a Christian. He is.
They said he’s too distant and aloof. He isn’t.

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[Quotes from Politico.com ]

Senator McCain on Friday (Oct 10, 08) seemed to be pushing back against the fear and hate Sarah Palin is encouraging against Senator Obama.

When a crowd member said at a town meeting in Lake­ville, Minn., on Friday that he feared what would happen if Obama were elected, McCain said that Obama is “a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

The crowd booed.

Why wouldn’t it? McCain says there is nothing to fear from Obama, while McCain’s running mate says Obama pals around with terrorists who target America.

“The crowd booed.” What does that tell us about “the crowd”? This is behavior that needs to go away. Seriously. How can we protect America if we treat fellow Americans that way » Continue Reading »

Phil Johnson over at Seeing the Forest sees one of the important differences between these two campaigns for the Presidency.

Compare the reaction of Obama and his campaign to last nights “that one” comment by McCain, to McCain and his campaign’s reaction to Obama saying that McCain’s policies put “lipstick on a pig.”

Basically the Obama reaction was to ignore it, while the McCain campaign and supporting Republican noise machine went into a several-day hissy fit.

I was visiting with a college student recently who told me it seems to him that our government is constantly trying to scare us to death » Continue Reading »

I have to urge you to go read this diary by greenrose2 over at dailykos.

It’s titled “an unsung moment of the debate.”

… it was in watching the replay that I picked up my absolute favorite unsung moment of the debate.

It came when Senator McCain was stumbling with Ahmadinejad’s name. He was stumbling hard, almost unable to get the name or any semblance of it pronounced. Very quietly, but audibly Senator Obama can be heard saying something. In the first viewing, I knew he had said something there, but was unable to decipher exactly what he had said. In listening to the replay it’s easy to hear his comment.

Was it a put-down, an insult, some sort of mocking coming from Obama? Nope. » Continue Reading »

Does McCain really lie as a campaign tactic? And don’t tell me that “Obama does it too” (which, by the way, is not true). That’s a junior high style of argument. Do not neglect to answer the question about McCain (and by implication about Palin).

Does McCain lie regularly as a deliberate campaign tactic? IF he does, should that matter to Christians? Or is it enough that Dobson supports him, no matter how he behaves?

Here’s a short (less than 4-minute) youtube video showing McCain lying about Obama and about himself. » Continue Reading »

We all know there are lots of unrealistic concerns about Obama – deliberately spread by often well-paid right-wing fabricators. But there are other concerns as well, some of them more well-founded. Here are some I’ve heard and my reactions.

I. The Enthusiasm of the Crowds at Obama Rallies and at the Democratic National Convention Is Dangerously Overboard

I’ve even heard it questioned whether there is not a parallel to the massive rallies for Hitler in Nazi Germany. That comparison does not impress me.

Enthusiasm for Obama derives largely from the sense that he is trying to tell us the truth and that he is in general a truthful person. We have been lied to so persistently » Continue Reading »

The Matthew 25 Network has a very helpful page for Christians who want to know the truth about Senator Barack Obama as against the flood of lies we have all experienced. As promised, here’s a lengthy excerpt from that page.

These particular lies – with rebuttals – all concern Obama’s positions on abortion-related issues. There are many other lies circulating, » Continue Reading »

Obama and McCain each just spent an hour answering questions from Rick Warren, pastor at Saddleback Church in Forest Hills, CA.

I have a few apparently biased observations:

OBAMA

Obama put considerable emphasis on the actual moral priorities of Jesus, mentioning the Matthew 25 teaching more than once – Jesus’ statement that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” He emphasized that Jesus definitely was concerned about “the least of these.”

In fact, when asked what has been America’s greatest moral failing he said it was the violation of that directive from Jesus in a number of different ways down through the years. It was obvious listening to the Fox News types afterward » Continue Reading »

The Matthew 25 Network website features Bible quotes like

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are all of the same body.
- Ephesians 4:25

Seems elementary, doesn’t it? Why should we have to remind fellow Christians to tell the truth about other people? But Paul had to remind the believers at Ephesus, and we have to remind the believers of America.

Because a lot of professing Christians are still parroting lies about Obama (and others), and still forwarding – and choosing to believe – those lying emails.

It also features a verse from its namesake chapter, Matthew 25 » Continue Reading »

From an AP article at Yahoo News Aug 2. Obama, recently campaigning in Florida, says McCain’s campaign is guilty of cynically distracting people from the issues, a tactic which is not exactly racism. Then he said:

“What I’m interested in, ultimately, is going to be governing,” he told reporters at a morning news conference. “What that means is we’re going to have to try to get things done.”

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Politics makes strange bedfellows – it’s often the lure of money and power that does it. I wonder what’s doing it in this case.

Here’s Dobson, a leading voice for “family values,” still supporting men whose unsavory characters are on public display and whose personal and political actions have done much to damage our world’s families and little to support or protect them. » Continue Reading »

The Post interviewed Jim Peterman in Findlay, Ohio about the true and false input he gets about Barack Obama and it’s effect on him.

I. The Marketplace of “Facts”

They see Peterman as an “open-minded” voter, and ponder the deluge of lying “information” about Obama that Peterman faces in his community and on the internet.

Peterman has watched enough news and campaign advertisements to hear the truth: Sen. Barack Obama, born in Hawaii, is a Christian family man » Continue Reading »

Jordan Zakarin wrote a good spoof news article entitled Jesus Demures on Obama VP Talk.

Obama is pretty attractive to a lot of Americans as a possible national leader, so…

“[Jesus is] concerned with a number of things,” said the operative … the Son of God was afraid he would be overshadowed by Obama throughout the campaign. “The guy [Obama] is hot right now, with a real massive following, and I don’t think Jesus wants to get lost in the shuffle.”

Well, that might be an issue. But here’s a more frightening one. » Continue Reading »

I. Waves of Slander

I don’t have statistics, but we all know there’s a lot of falsehood circulating freely online.

An email arrives with frightening accusations or innuendos and the reader gets frightened (as was intended) and forwards the email to warn others of the great danger revealed.

But what if the email is one of the mostly false ones? How should we react if we’re not entirely sure of it’s truthfulness? After all, when we accept at face value lies about a person, group, or situation, and repeat those lies, we have put ourselves in a very bad place – we have become gossips and slanderers.

Slander, you may have heard, is not a Bible virtue, » Continue Reading »

Senator Joe Biden can speak English. Is this clear enough?

… there is no daylight between President Bush and Sen. McCain …

Like President Bush, Sen. McCain is presenting the American people with a false choice – national security or civil liberties. We need a President who understands that we can have both. It’s what our values and our Constitution demands.

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“Violence and magic” – that sounds like the recent American approach to foreign policy. There’s been a lot a violence, considerable fantasy, and hope for, but precious little experience of, magic.

The new movie version of Prince Caspian (we saw it Saturday with grandkids) is fairly well done as cinema, I guess. It’s pretty in places, often intense and scary (or pretending to be), and funny or clever in places, and it is reminiscent of Narnia. But a lot of the over-two-hours » Continue Reading »

Sen. Obama is certainly not quaking in fear of right-wing slander, like so many have for so many years. Today he answered Bush who the other day compared Obama to Hitler-appeasers of the 1930’s.

At about 2:45 into a clip of his speech Obama says,

If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting America, that is a debate I’m happy to have … and that is a debate I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.

They do indeed. It seems to me we are living under a regime of war-makers, who have quickly and frequently lied to us to justify their behavior. In fact, we all know that – they have lied to us repeatedly and very publicly, often in direct support of their desire to spread war to yet more places on our planet.

But the New Testament » Continue Reading »