Defending President Obama’s Faith

by | Feb 23, 2012 | Feature, Headline News | 6 comments

Belonging Before Believing

Critics are once again questioning President Obama’s faith.

Questioning the President’s Faith

Yesterday, in an interview that was supposed to be about testimony at congressional hearings on the Affordable Care Act contraception mandate, MSNBC host Martin Bashir grilled Dr. Craig Mitchell, an associate professor of ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, about a recent upsurge in attacks on President Obama’s Christian faith.

Bashir became incredulous when Mitchell said the president wasn’t the first to “have that charge leveled against him.”

“People do have their concerns and it’s not wrong for them to express those ideas,” said Mitchell. “What I know is that he says that he’s a Christian, so I have to take him at his word.”

“That kind of response is damning someone with faint praise,” Bashir replied as he pressed Mitchell again and again to affirm the president’s faith based on both his words and his deeds.

Speaking Up for the President

No one who knows the president would question his Christian faith, Florida mega-church pastor Joel Hunter said today on a press call that was designed to counter “escalating attacks on President Obama’s faith and engagement with the faith community.”

“I’m very saddened by that kind of evaluation because it’s obviously coming from a political stance rather than a personal stance,” Hunter said. He attributed recent comments by Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and the Rev. Franklin Graham that cast doubt on President Obama’s faith to election year politics.

“When we get together, we don’t talk about policy or politics. We talk about his personal life, his family. We pray for the country,” Hunter said of his informal role as pastoral adviser to the president. “I often find myself thinking: I wish a good number of my congregation were as devoted to daily spiritual growth as this man is. So it really grieves me to hear people questioning his faith. I’m just sorry that it’s part of the political process.”

Actions Speak

Other religious and non-profit leaders on the call talked up the good works they’ve been engaged in with the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Thabiti Boone, for example, praised President Obama for the Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative he launched in 2010.

Boone is the international representative for Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative and said his organization has been “on the ground since day one” with the president, working to strengthen families. Seven hundred Omega Psi Phi chapters have committed themselves to improving the importance of fatherhood, Boone said. They’ve done so by partnering with local fatherhood programs in their communities, identifying mentorship opportunities, and advocating with elected officials.

Boone is also a fatherhood advisor to the Allan Houston Foundation and said the foundation is working with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office in New York City to support the president’s initiative. Given Bloomberg’s intransigence on the New York City Board of Education’s decision to prevent religious groups from renting public school space for worship, UrbanFaith asked Boone if the mayor works with faith-based groups on the initiative.

“Yes, he’s working to increase opportunities of how does he connect and tie in with the faith-based community in New York City?” said Boone.

Relationships Are Stronger Than Ever

“The state of the federal government’s relationships with faith-based groups is stronger than ever. Common ground is sought and it is found. Religious freedom is respected and partnerships are being developed in record numbers,” said the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president emeritus of the National Council of Churches.

She also said she appreciated the fact that President Obama asked the White House Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships Advisory Council, on which she served, to respect religious freedom. She quoted the president as saying, “If we lose religious freedom, we lose democracy.”

Hunter, who worked with the previous administration’s Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, said, for President Obama, the office is “an expression of who he is as a Christian.” Hunter recalled a pre-2008 conversation he had with the president, in which they both agreed that faith communities are underutilized in solving the nation’s problems.

“When I did get to hear his testimony for the first time—this was well before he was president—I was struck by how much it involved service to neighbors and how his call to Christ was about helping out the poor and the vulnerable. That was just part of his understanding of what his faith was. And so, all of this work that is being done is not simply good government. It is also a genuine part of how he understands his own responsibility and his own faith,” said Hunter.

Mistakes Were Made

UrbanFaith asked if any participants on the call would concede that the administration had stumbled recently in its communication with religious groups and citizens?

Boone said that as he has traveled the country, speaking to churches and other faith-based groups about fatherhood and mentoring, he’s found increased interest in and support for the president’s programs.

Hunter said that from a white evangelical perspective, “The first iteration of the announcement on the contraceptive ruling was a stumble.” However, he said he appreciates the fact that the administration acted to correct its “mistake.”

Melissa Rogers, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chair of the Faith-based and Neighborhood Advisory Council, agreed that the administration “did not strike the right balance with their January 20 announcement,” but affirmed the president’s decision to change course.

She said she disagrees with the administration on some church/state separation and religious freedom issues, but argued that it has “made important contributions to the furthering of religious freedom.” For example, Rogers said the Department of Justice has repeatedly “gone to bat” for houses of worship to prevent them from being zoned out of communities.

“That’s really spectacular work. It’s work of the first order in terms of promoting religious freedom. That work hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves,” said Rogers. “It would be a mistake to overlook very important achievements like the Department of Justice’s work to ensure that our religious institutions, that are so important to us, are able to locate across America in a way that does so much to further faith and to protect the religious freedom of the faith community.”

Time ran out before UrbanFaith could ask if, as critics charge, the administration is downgrading it’s support for religious freedom internationally.

What do you think?

Is the president’s faith fair game in an election year?

Jobs Report: Sunny With a Chance of Setback

by | Feb 7, 2012 | Feature, Headline News |

Unemployment Fell, but Remains High

The Labor Department reported on Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent in January from a high of 10 percent in late 2009, but unemployment still “remains higher than it has been for any presidential election since the Great Depression,” The New York Times reported.

Encouraging, but a Long Way to Go

“This report is encouraging, but it still underscores how far a distance we have to go and how many people are still long-term unemployed and disconnected from the workforce,” Harvard economist Lawrence Katz told The Huffington Post. “Even if we were willing to say that the scars of the great recession mean a couple of million people drop out permanently, we still have many years to go before we get back to where we were.”

Don’t Expect ‘Full Employment Until 2012

More precisely, the year began with fewer workers employed than in January 2001, said economist Paul Krugman at The New York Times. “At January’s pace of job creation it would take us until 2019 to return to full employment,” said Krugman.

Private Sector Remains Engine of Growth

“The private sector remained the engine of growth,” according to The Times. “While federal agencies and local governments continued to lay off workers, businesses added 257,000 net new jobs in January. The biggest gains were in manufacturing, professional and business services, and leisure and hospitality.”

Companies Looking to the Future

“The past several recent jobs reports seem to indicate that private companies are beginning to look toward the future and consider hiring,” Brian Hamilton, CEO of financial information company Sageworks Inc. told Forbes. “We don’t know if the positive jobs trend will continue, but it is definitely a good trend,” he said.

Politicians Disagree on Interpretation

Republicans “downplayed” the report, “describing the improvements as welcome but ‘anemic,’” Fox News reported. “The White House, meanwhile, cited the report as ‘encouraging’ evidence that the economy is on the upswing, and urged Congress to support jobs measures backed by President Obama to keep that trend going.”

It’s All Good

“The strangest thing about January’s jobs report is that it’s pretty much all good,” said Ezra Klein at The Washington Post. “The bottom line is that this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report.”

Austery Measures Will Backfire

Krugman warned however that renewed calls for federal austerity measures would backfire. “The sad truth is that the good jobs numbers have definitely made it less likely that the Fed will take the expansionary action it should. So here’s what needs to be said about the latest numbers: yes, we’re doing a bit better, but no, things are not O.K. — not remotely O.K. This is still a terrible economy, and policy makers should be doing much more than they are to make it better,” said Krugman.

What do you think?

Is there reason to be optimistic about the economy?

Reactions Vary to Failed Debt Deal

by | Nov 22, 2011 | Feature, Headline News |

Blame the President

Democrats and Republicans are predictably hurling blame at one another after news broke Monday that a bipartisan group of congressional leaders had failed to make a deal to reduce U.S. debt, and two operatives from the George W. Bush administration, are, of course, blaming the president.

“It’s not going to advantage the president, even if these numbers stay where they are today, because at the end of the day, people are going to say, ‘You’re the guy in charge. Why didn’t you get something done?'” former senior Bush advisor Karl Rove told Fox News. Likewise, in a Washington Post column, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said, “The super committee failed primarily because President Obama gave a shrug.”

Blame Congressional Gridlock

President Obama’s entire first term “has shown that neither political party can impose its will on the other,” countered William Galston at The New Republic in response to the news. “Unless he were to win a victory as large as FDR in 1936 or LBJ in 1964 (and there’s no prospect of that), his second-term choices reduce to two: continuing gridlock or a new formula for doing the people’s business across party lines.”

“The idea of the committee was, in part, to save Congress from itself,” said Michael Cooper at The New York Times. “It was Congress lashing itself to the mast, like Odysseus, to resist the siren calls of lobbyists and special interest groups. But in the end, the ship went nowhere.”

It’s no surprise then that citizen reaction reflected disgust and “a record 84 percent of Americans said they disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job in the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll,” but it may be surprising to learn that some are actually celebrating the failure.

Celebrate Failure

“A super committee working to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits was an absurd anachronism in the era of Occupy Wall Street,” Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told The Huffington Post. “Good bye and good riddance,” he said.

Even if there had been a deal, only $1.2 trillion would have been cut from a projected decade-long $9 trillion in deficits and each new congress would have had to re-enact the cuts, explained Edward Morrissey at The Week. “Congress is still in session for the next 14 months before the sequestration cuts take effect. Instead of throwing our hands up in surrender, we should insist that the full Congress do its job and plan a responsible budget. There is also a benefit to this failure; it will be a long time before any Congress can propose another ‘super committee’ to avoid accountability for one of Congress’ basic responsibilities,” he argued.

Lament Shameful Election Year Futility

In the end, the battle for the White House may loom largest over the failure.

“What makes the super committee’s collapse so frustrating is that a consensus seemed to be building in favor of deficit reduction. It was reflected in the report of a presidential commission and in negotiations between Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). Now, with an election looming, the possibility of change seems remote. That isn’t just disappointing, it’s shameful,” declared a Los Angeles Times editorial.

What Do You Think?

Whose fault is the super-committee failure and does it even matter?