Aide Shares the Bible Devotionals He Sent to President Obama Each Morning

by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 24, 2013 | Feature, Headline News |

c. 2013 Religion News Service

(RNS) President Obama may not attend church most Sundays, but a new book reveals the Bible verses and prayers that he reads every morning.

“The President’s Devotional,” released Tuesday (Oct. 22) by Pentecostal minister turned political aide Joshua DuBois, is a compilation of 365 of the more than 1,500 meditations DuBois has sent the president since he started working for him in the U.S. Senate.

DuBois, who left his White House post in February, spent his weekends reading and praying over what he would send to Obama’s Blackberry the next week. He drew from the words of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the songs of Nina Simone and Bob Dylan, and the activism of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

DuBois, 31, hopes the meditations “written for a Christian president” might appeal to people of diverse faiths.

“I think the ones that have been most useful to the president were those that focused on knowing God’s love for us, knowing how to love our neighbors and knowing how to start each day with peace and joy,” he said in an interview on Monday.

He continues to send devotional messages to Obama every morning, even though he is no longer director of Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

In one of the dozen essays that introduce a month’s devotional readings, DuBois recalls how Obama took on a pastoral role as he talked with surviving family members of the 20 elementary schoolchildren killed in Newtown, Conn.

“There’s really no other way to describe his outreach other than ministry,” DuBois said of that day in December 2012. “In those dark times, I think he did his best to share the love of God with people who were just facing just a heart-wrenching tragedy.”

DuBois was on the receiving end of Obama’s personal touch when he learned in 2005 that his own father — who had been involved in an insurance scam — had died in prison.

At the time DuBois was the person who wrote letters to the senator’s Illinois constituents — “the lowest staffer on the totem pole” — but he nevertheless got a call to visit Obama’s office.

“For him to take the time to call me into his office and wrap his arms around me and talk to me about his own dad and give me some words of encouragement in that very difficult moment really showed me President Obama’s character,” DuBois said.

Before DuBois got engaged in May 2012, the president occasionally reminded his then-special assistant that he shouldn’t drag his feet on marriage. Privately and publicly — even in front of the dozen faith leaders gathered in the Oval Office to launch the advisory council to DuBois’ faith-based office — he’d ask, “You engaged yet?” DuBois said it was less badgering and more emphasizing the importance of lasting relationships.

“It took me a while to absorb that point but I finally did,” said DuBois, who married the former Michelle Duff-Mitchell on Sept. 1.

DuBois, who now runs the Values Partnerships consulting firm, also revealed that he disagreed with Obama and others in the administration on the controversial contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act. He wrote that he argued “the government just can’t force religious organizations to pay for things they don’t believe in.”

When the White House carved out an exemption for some religious groups, DuBois said it showed the administration heard and understood the criticism.

“I think the White House over time really got it right and struck the right balance between religious liberty and protecting the rights of women,” he said.

Here are three of the meditations in “The President’s Devotional”:

May 25

Being Right

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. – 1 Corinthians 8:9 (NIV)

We can do anything today — and we’d probably be right.

Our statements are likely backed by unassailable facts and solid figures. Our postures toward those who have wronged us are probably justified. The judgment we cast on others is likely warranted, given their misdeeds.

But is being right . . . worth it? Once we’ve summited the mountain of our own correctness, what great prize will we receive?

Paul, echoed by the poet Maya Angelou, reminds us of what is most important. Not our correctness nor the exercise of our multitude of rights. Rather, what is most important is the impression we leave behind on our brothers and sisters, the edification that is left in our wake, and the echoes of our love.

Dear God, let me put first things first — not my own “rightness” but my love for you and for others. Amen.

November 17

Religion

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

– James 1:22 (NIV)

I would not so dishonour God as to lend my voice to perpetuate all the mad and foolish things which men have dared to say of Him. I believe that we may find in the Bible the highest and purest religion . . . most of all in the history of Him in whose name we all are called. His religion — not the Christian religion, but the religion of Christ — the poor man’s gospel; the message of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of love; and, oh, how gladly would I spend my life, in season and out of season, in preaching this! – James Anthony Froude, “The Nemesis of Faith”

We have to peel back the layers of religion to find Christ. When our churches, our pastors, our leaders point us toward Jesus, toward his word and his love, they deserve our full embrace.

But when we encounter religion and leave feeling less connected with Christ than when we began, we know something’s amiss. That’s when we must return to the basics: reading the Bible for ourselves, experiencing a prayerful communion with God, and engaging in gentle fellowship with other believers.

Religion is either an up-escalator to our Savior or a down-escalator to something else. When it goes up, let’s ride. When it goes down, let’s be sure to get off.

Jesus, be my religion. Help me find the support necessary to grow closer to you. Amen.

December 19

Withdraw and Pray

Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.  – Luke 5:15–16 (NIV)

We can’t give everyone all of us, all the time. Sometimes, like Jesus, we have to withdraw, and pray.

Leadership is not just physically straining; it taps our spirit too. When the water in the well has drawn low, we must be intentional about pressing pause in our public roles and finding quiet spaces in which we can be replenished. Jesus, after pouring himself out for the crowds, “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” If we’re going to continue at maximum capacity and impact, we should regularly do the same.

Dear God, let me know when to engage and when to disconnect. Help me find my own “lonely places,” where I can go and pray. Amen.

Copyright 2013 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

The Fight to End “Stop and Frisk,” Will Bloomberg Win?

by Jeneba Ghatt | Oct 24, 2013 | Feature, Headline News | 2 comments

End “Stop & Frisk” Rally

Even on his way out the door, Michael Bloomberg is still fighting for the right of New York City police to wantonly stop and frisk black and Hispanic youth police suspect may be committing a crime–whether they have independent reason to think so or not.

Recently, the city appealed a lower court judge’s decision to deny the city’s request to continue its controversial practice even though the judge, in August, found the policy unconstitutional. The city wanted to continue on until the case had made it up through the appellate courts.The controversy may also be at the heart of New York City’s upcoming mayoral election as well.

Democratic nominee Bill de Blasio was able to use once front-runner for the Democratic nomination Christine Quinn’s connection to outgoing three-term mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) to eventually secure a win.

Furthermore, political watchers pointed out how much of de Blasio’s primary campaign seemed to be against the Bloomberg years. Core to his message was reversing the police Stop and Frisk policy, which Bloomberg has ardently defended and supported.

It all comes down to personal rights and crime.

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, protects Americans from unlawful search and seizure. However, the US Supreme Court in a 1968 case, Terry v. Ohio, interpreted that police officers have the right to question people they have a “reasonable suspicion” to believe were part of or are about to commit a crime. In the interest of safety of officers, the court said they could pat down a suspect to make sure they are not concealing a weapon that could be used against a questioning office. This became known as a “Terry Stop” or more commonly “ Stop and Frisk.”

During these pat downs, often times, police will usually not discover weapons, but rather illegal drugs or other items which would then form a basis to arrest the suspect. Without some independent evidence or other form of probable cause, officers usually cannot just randomly arrest citizens.

The law is still valid, but has been subject to abuse. Yet, critics of “Stop and Frisk” in New York city have said it was watered down and was being conducted casually, increasingly, and lasciviously without regard to people’s constitutional rights.

Over the past decade, New York Police significantly increased its stop and frisk rate. Between 2004 and 2009 police stopped 2.8 million people and Blacks were among 50% of those stopped. Latinos 30% and whites were merely 10% of that population.

In 2008, on behalf of four individuals, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a class action complaint against the city. It argued that the practice violated the Fourth Amendment and officers had been using no independent or separate reasons to stop and frisk people but simply stopping black youth in inner city neighborhoods, wantonly, and without any attempt to follow the standard set up in the Terry case.

In May of 2012, a judge granted class action status. One of the plaintiffs, Lalit Clarkson, a 20-year old charter school teacher’s aid in the Bronx said, in 2006 he was coming from work when two officers stopped and searched him for drugs. “I think many folks in our community feel there is no accountability for when their rights are violated by the police,” Clarkson told the New York Times.

The city admitted that within the first 3 months of 2012 alone, it had stopped and frisked 200,000 people, mainly young black men. Bloomberg credited the substantial and exponential drop in crime in the city and the targeted neighborhoods on the practice and vowed to maintain it. But in August, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin agreed that the law indeed violates the Fourth Amendment, finding the Police Department resorted to a “policy of indirect racial profiling” as it increased the number of stops in minority communities. That has led to officers’ routinely stopping “blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white.”

The decision also stated that New York police were too quick to deem suspicious behavior that was perfectly innocent, in effect watering down the legal standard required for a stop.“Blacks are likely targeted for stops based on a lesser degree of objectively founded suspicion than whites,” she wrote.

In the 195-page opinion, (summarized here), the judge called for the federal government to oversee reforms of the system and asked that officers wear body cameras during patrols, noting also that she was not calling an end to the practice.

Bloomberg appealed the decision and said he wouldn’t ask his officers to change the practice overnight. “You’re not going to see any change in tactics overnight,” Bloomberg said this August after the decision was handed down, adding that he hoped police would be allowed to continue their practice through the appeal process and the end of his term. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a lot of people dying.”

However, he had a slightly softer stance later when he admitted to a New Yorker reporter that if he had a son who routinely got stopped as young black men do, he may have had a change of heart.

It was another door opener for de Blasio who has a black wife and bi-racial son to connect more with the very diverse and Democratic residents of New York City. In a campaign ad, with his son in it, de Blasio refers to talking to his son about possibly getting stopped and frisked.

Bloomberg’s wish of hoping the practice continues until the end of his term got denied on September 17, when a judge denied his request to retain it until the case exhausts its appeal. He recently appealed it to the court of appeals.

President Obama’s Africa Policy: Too Much, Too Little, or Too Late?

by Jeneba Ghatt | Oct 22, 2013 | Feature, Headline News |

Last month, the world was focused on Syria with much of the buzz focused on Russian president Vladimir Putin challenging President Obama’s reference to American Exceptionalism. The president mentioned this concept during a speech he gave last month at the height of Syria’s alleged chemical warfare crisis. In the midst of his recommendation for a limited military strike, he suggested that Americans are endowed as exceptional, perhaps by a higher being, or by its position in the world as an influential super power and its historical role as a hub for democracy and admirable standards and principles. Meanwhile, an example of American Exceptionalism contribution to Africa can be seen in the Obama administration’s policies in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Recently, all eyes were on Kenya as its police battled an attack made by Somali members of al-Shabab—an Al Qaeda sympathizing terror group—on shoppers in an upscale mall in the East African nation. Before then, much focus was on Egypt and Syria. But Africa has been trying to shake the stereotypical images that many in the Western world have of it being a hub for war-torn conflict, famine, and underdevelopment. The Sub-Saharan region of the massive continent is quite eager to get past stagnation and become more self-sustaining and less dependent on foreign aid and assistance from nongovernmental entities and churches that mission there regularly. Given that President Obama is a son of Africa, with his father being born, raised and dying in Kenya, many Africans were eager to see him spend more time and effort there. But it didn’t happen.

The most time he spent on the continent was 22 hours during a fly over stop in Ghana in 2008. First Lady Michelle Obama sojourned there twice during this first term, though. President Obama was busy focusing on building up a downturn economy and passing an expansive healthcare legislation. He had little opportunity to devote to Africa, not until after securing this second term in office was he able to present his Africa Policy.

This summer, we learned it will focus on promoting broader democracy, government transparency, less corruption and electoral fraud. He’ll also work on getting more nations that make up Sub-Sahara to develop and maintain international standards so that they can rely less on international aid and build up a sustainable middle class.

Over the course of a 7-night diplomatic trip, the president trekked through all economic regions of Sub-Sahara Africa meeting with and addressing various African leaders and groups. The venture is a promising aspect of Obama’s Africa policy, which seems to focus on long-term sustenance, trade, and development initiatives that would position nations in Sub-Sahara Africa to compete globally and be leaders in 21^st century growth fields.

During his second term, however, he’s had opportunity to pivot and focus some energy on Africa. The mission this summer, albeit belated in the eyes of some, was a welcome effort.  Indeed, Obama had big shoes to fill as his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both launched many initiatives and spent lots of money in Africa.

Their efforts were key to reducing the rate of HIV/AIDS , malaria, infant and maternal mortality; and increasing food security and safety. Even the newest prime minister of China visited within a month of taking office. China along with Brazil had invested much in Africa, though mainly to extract precious oil and other natural resources from the mineral rich land mass. Still, in 2012 Brazil’s top investment bank BTG Pactual said it planned to raise $1 billion to create the world’s biggest investment fund for Africa, focusing on areas such as infrastructure, energy and agriculture. Its two most recent prime ministers visited over 25 nations.

Obama did in fact pick up from where Bush left off, but pivoted slightly. His choice to focus on trade is a smart one as it has implications beyond the here and now and could spell good business for the US as well.

Currently, “Africa receives merely 2% of all US exports,” Obama said during remarks at a business leaders forum in Tanzania. US government’s total trade with the entire continent is same as trade with Brazil or South Africa which each have a small fraction of Africa’s population. Taiwan, has 1/38 of Africa’s population yet exported $28 billion to the US, roughly the equivalent of Macy’s annual revenues. To say Africa is underperforming on its potential is an understatement.

“The entire GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa is still less than $2 trillion — which is about the same as Italy,” Obama said at the forum.

From the half a dozen or so speeches and policy positions presented in Africa, it is probably safe to summarize Obama’s Africa policy into three priorities

a) Promoting and helping alleviate Africa’s energy deficiencies which have stymied the continent’s ability to grow to its fullest economic potential;

b) Encouraging and bolstering ongoing trade initiatives with the United States and among nations within regions of the continent; and

c) Helping establish and maintain international standards in trade, the electoral process,

In addition, the US is also helping to combat the $7 to $10 billion annual illegal animal trade that is “decimating the populations for some of Africa’s iconic animals.”

Rhino horns sell on black market for $30,000 a pound and elephant tusks for $1,000 a pound.

The president also announced during his Tanzania trip, that the US State Department would give an additional $10 million in regional and bilateral training and technical aid to combat wildlife trafficking. It tacks on the money already spent in Africa and Asia to counter poaching, train law enforcement officers in wildlife crime investigation, and helps build more wild life conservation.

Energy is Africa’s Future

The most pronounced visual imagery in news reports from of the trip was that of the president bouncing a soccer ball on his head. Only it wasn’t just for fun and games.

After showing off his skills, he was able to use the kinetic energy created from the ball bouncing around to power up a phone. A Kenyan-American woman invented the ball, called a “Sokket” ball as part of Uncharted Play, a nine-person New York City-based not-for-profit organization that is working to bring electricity into rural communities like those found in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The ball could also be used to light up a lamp to read at night.

That exhibit was an example of the type of innovation that could ease Africa’s energy problem and possibly help it leapfrog other nations in future energy creation. The International Energy Agency predicts that Sub-Saharan Africa will require more than $300 billion in investment to achieve universal electricity by 2030.

If Africa were to successfully adopt and implement clean technology to meet the challenges of the billions of inhabitants, it could prove a convincing test case for relatively new technology.  Obama could easily point to successes in Africa’s experimentation with exploiting new renewable energy sources when skeptics here challenge the technology.

US sends food aid to Africa annually but insufficient and archaic power sources make it difficult for rural villages and other areas to get power to generate refrigerators and storage—more than two-thirds of the people in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity

Power Africa is a program, targeted toward encouraging and aiding innovation. It will include a $2 million off-grid energy challenge funded by the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF). African-owned and operated enterprises could compete for up to $100,000 to develop or expand the use of proven technologies for off-grid electricity benefitting rural and marginal populations.

Suzan Johnson Cook to Resign as Religious Freedom Ambassador

by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 16, 2013 | Feature, Headline News |

WASHINGTON (RNS) Suzan Johnson Cook, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, will announce this week that she is resigning after 17 months on the job, according to two sources familiar with her office.

President Obama nominated the former Baptist minister to serve as his top adviser on protecting religious freedom around the world. When confirmed by the Senate in April 2011, she became the first woman and the first African-American in the position, which had been held by two people before her.

Obama had been criticized for taking too much time after his own swearing-in to nominate a religious freedom ambassador, a position created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

He first nominated Johnson Cook in June 2010, but her nomination expired in January 2011 and Obama was forced to renominate her several weeks later.

During the nomination battle, Johnson Cook likened herself to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“They called Margaret Thatcher the ‘Iron Lady,’” she said just after being renominated. “Change the name. It’s mine now.”

Obama was criticized for choosing Cook, who had strong religious credentials and ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political network, but scant diplomatic experience.

But she had a track record as a high-level counselor. She advised President Bill Clinton as a White House fellow on the Domestic Policy Council, and worked with the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development on faith-based issues.

Cook also founded Wisdom Women Worldwide Center, a global organization for female faith leaders.

During her Senate confirmation hearing, Cook cited her travels to five continents. She has led interfaith delegations to Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Caribbean.

Cook said U.S. diplomacy on religious freedom should involve not just forging relations with government officials but working with religious leaders abroad who can help influence political leaders.

“The front lines demand strategic action, not emotional nor reactionary tactics, but strategic, prayerful action,” Cook said in 2011. “Either we deal with it now or fundamental extremists can fill the power vacuums where regions have lacked democratic institutions.”

In recent months, her office has been eclipsed by the appointment of Shaun Casey, a Christian ethicist and longtime Democratic consultant, as head of the State Department’s Office of Faith-based Community Initiatives, where he oversees religious engagement for Secretary John Kerry.

Cook received her doctor of ministry degree from United Theological Seminary in 1990 and spent much of her career in her native New York City, where she was senior pastor and CEO of the Bronx Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in New York City from 1996 to 2010. According to her State Department biography, she was also a chaplain with the New York City Police Department for 21 years and served on the front lines during 9/11, where she was publicized as “America’s chaplain.”

Sources who said she was leaving the job, who declined to be publicly named because the announcement had not been made public, said they did not know what she would do next, or who might be nominated to replace her.

Copyright 2013 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

’12 Years a Slave’ Prompts Calls for Racial Reconciliation

by UrbanFaith Staff | Oct 15, 2013 | Feature, Headline News |

WASHINGTON (RNS) The new movie “12 Years a Slave” may depict a bygone era in American history, but religious leaders hope it might spark increased attention about present-day race relations.

“It is the elephant in the room,” said the Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner, a facilitator of the National African American Clergy Network, speaking at a panel discussion after a recent screening.

“If you even raise race today, you are ‘race baiting.’ You’re playing ‘the race card,’” said Williams-Skinner, who is also the CEO of the Skinner Leadership Institute.

The movie gives an unflinching account of the true story of Solomon Northup, a free man living in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., who was kidnapped and spent a dozen years as a slave in the South, wrongly accused of being a Georgia runaway.

Clergy and activists hope the movie that opens Friday (Oct. 18) — with its depiction of whippings and other degradation — will be a catalyst for churches to recall slavery and address the current state of the nation’s race relations. They point to controversies from the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin to the Supreme Court striking down a major provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Sojourners, the Washington-based anti-poverty group, will be circulating “The One Church One Body Pledge” in hopes of starting a new conversation to improve race relations.

“Many white Christians and churches have no connection to what is being felt and said in black churches nationwide — both about fear for their children and fear of losing their voting rights,” the pledge reads.

It urges supporters to seek racial reconciliation and help the church become “a multiracial community.” It calls on them to “repair our criminal justice system” and urge Congress to “restore the integrity of the Voting Rights Act.”

Sojourners’ founder, Jim Wallis, tied the stories of families separated in “12 Years a Slave” to often-forgotten African-American children who attend inadequate schools or live on streets where hundreds are shot each year.

“It’s still going on every damn day,” he said.

The Rev. Michael McBride, a Berkeley, Calif.-based advocate on mass incarceration with PICO National Network, said he hopes the movie will encourage people to view the punitive aspects of U.S. society as excessive and not “grounded in Scripture.”

The film sometimes addresses questions of faith, including a slave master quoting from the Bible at an outdoor worship service, legitimizing his authority to control and whip the slaves gathered before him.

“The faith that they had in the film was really capitalism in drag,” said the Rev. Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, speaking of the slave owners depicted in the movie.

Galen Carey, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said there’s no “one step” that will move the church on race relations. But “authentic encounters” in local churches can help.

A small group at his Columbia, Md., church discovered a sharp racial disparity among its members over whether they’d listed themselves as organ donors on their driver’s licenses. Black members recalled notorious medical experiments on unsuspecting black men in the mid-1900s.

“Every single African-American in our group said, ‘No way would I do that ’cause we can’t trust those people,’” Carey said. “And every white person said, ‘What do you mean?’”

Copyright 2013 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.