Divider-in-Chief (20 page)
Authors: Kate Obenshain
He's even promoted Obamacare by invoking morality. “We are God's partners in matters of life and death,” he told rabbis during a conference call to sell his health care reform proposal.
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Obama has also invoked his faith in supporting same-sex marriage and other items on the gay rights agenda. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama justified his support for same-sex civil unions. “If people find that controversial,” he told people at a town hall event in Ohio, “then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That's my view. But we can have a respectful disagreement on that.”
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“When we think about our faith,” he said in explaining his decision to support same-sex marriage to ABC's Robin Roberts, “the thing at root that
we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule.... Treat others the way you would want to be treated.”
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we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule.... Treat others the way you would want to be treated.”
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This is not to say Obama is always successful in convincing his audience that his policies are faith-based initiatives. A May 15, 2012, CBS News/
New York Times
poll found that 67 percent of respondents said Obama came out for same-sex marriage “mostly for political reasons.” Only 24 percent said he made the decision “mostly because he thinks it's right.”
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New York Times
poll found that 67 percent of respondents said Obama came out for same-sex marriage “mostly for political reasons.” Only 24 percent said he made the decision “mostly because he thinks it's right.”
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Obama isn't alone in citing his faith to justify support for same-sex marriage. In the wake of Obama's announcement, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is Catholic, said, “My religion has, compels meâand I love it for itâto be against discrimination of any kind in our country, and I consider [opposition to same-sex marriage] a form of discrimination. I think it's unconstitutional on top of that.”
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Obama is also more than willing to justify his out-of-control spending with religious talk. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2012, Obama broke decorum to talk politics. “I think to myself, if I'm willing to give something up as somebody who's been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that's going to make economic sense,” he said. “But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that âfor unto whom much is given, much shall be required.'”
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The left has been on a long crusade to portray Republican budget cuts as antithetical to faith. When it was announced in April 2012 that House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan would deliver a speech at Georgetown University explaining how Catholic teaching shaped his budget proposal, 100 faculty members signed a letter condemning his appearance.
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In response to Republican-proposed budget cuts in 2011 and 2012, liberal Christian activist Jim Wallis launched the “What Would Jesus Cut” campaign. Wallis believed the cuts, which included cuts to welfare programs, international aid, and college grants, were “unbiblical.”
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The premise of Wallis's campaign was that “cutting programs that help those who need them most is morally wrong.” Wallis does approve
of cutting one item on the budget: military spending, which he says is “the most corrupt government spending.”
of cutting one item on the budget: military spending, which he says is “the most corrupt government spending.”
Obama is in a fortunate position as a believer. He is not a member of an established church with centuries of dogma and doctrines that he must navigate. The Reverend Wright's rantings notwithstanding, Obama doesn't risk provoking the criticism of his church whenever he talks about how his faith guides his public policy. He can articulate it any way he wants, whatever the occasion. So when Obama prefaces support for same-sex marriages with phrases like “I think,” “in my mind,” and “for my faith,” it's hard to argue. This makes it easier for him than for someone like Joe Biden.
During a September 2008
Meet the Press
interview, moderator Tom Brokaw asked Biden, “When does life begin?” That put Biden in a bind because he had to try to reconcile his pro-abortion views with the pro-life views of his church .
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Meet the Press
interview, moderator Tom Brokaw asked Biden, “When does life begin?” That put Biden in a bind because he had to try to reconcile his pro-abortion views with the pro-life views of his church .
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“As a Roman Catholic,” Biden started, “I'm prepared to accept the teachings of my churchâI'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.”
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He ran into trouble when he continued:
But let me tell you. There are an awful lot of people of great confessional faithsâProtestants, Jews, Muslims and othersâwho have a different view. They believe in God as strongly as I do. They're intensely as religious as I am religious. They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when lifeâI'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. And I know you get the push back, “Well, what about fascism?” Everybody, you know, you going to say fascism's all right? Fascism isn't a matter of faith. No decent religious person thinks fascism is a good idea.
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Things only got worse from there, as Biden threw in a reference to Saint Thomas Aquinas's
Summa Theologica
and tied himself in knots trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Summa Theologica
and tied himself in knots trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Brokaw then asked Biden about his support for abortion, given what he had just said about his belief that life begins at conception. Biden answered, “I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it's the moment of conception.”
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Biden's mangling of Catholic moral theology earned him an official rebuke from the bishops and from various Catholic theologians. Father Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center and a political liberal, said, “Politicians should not do theology. Whenever they start interpreting Catholic teaching, they invite Catholic bishops to jump all over them.”
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Obama's rhetoric does not invite the Catholic bishops to jump all over him, because he is not a Catholic. Obama is also fortunate because many conservatives are hesitant to criticize his faith. Many religious conservatives are grateful whenever they find anyone on the left willing to talk about God. For others, Obama's faith background is too deeply rooted in race, which makes even raising the issue of Obama's faith complicated. John McCain found Obama's religion and church so potentially hazardous that he refused to bring them up at all in the 2008 campaign.
This leaves Obama free to invoke his faith whenever he wants with little chance that he will be criticized or challenged for it. To Obama, talking about God and faith is a way to shut down debate on controversial issues. As is the case when he invokes his daughters, Obama seems to believe that Americans will accept his extreme views on moral issues so long as those views arise from his deepest religious beliefs.
For others, however, Obama's constant faith invocations may bring to mind his owns words from
The Audacity of Hope
: “Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faithâsuch as the politician who . . . sprinkles in a few biblical citations to spice up a thoroughly dry policy speech.”
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The Audacity of Hope
: “Nothing is more transparent than inauthentic expressions of faithâsuch as the politician who . . . sprinkles in a few biblical citations to spice up a thoroughly dry policy speech.”
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Abandoning the Faithful: How Obama Ignores Religious Persecution Abroad
O
bama positions himself as a president of deep Christian faith, yet the most powerful man in the world has studiously ignored one of the greatest, if underreported, scandals of our time: the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
bama positions himself as a president of deep Christian faith, yet the most powerful man in the world has studiously ignored one of the greatest, if underreported, scandals of our time: the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Part of the reason Obama ignores the plight of beleaguered Christians abroad is his devotion to aggressively advancing a radical social agenda of abortion and, more recently, “LGBT rights” worldwide. (LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and “transgender”âadd a couple letters depending on which college campus you visit: “q” for queer or questioning, “I” for intersex, etc.)
To the Obama administration, it is not religious freedom that is a universal right, but rather unrestricted abortion and the gay rights causes.
Obama's policies make clear that he is committed to persecuting Christians in America, denying them their constitutional rights to religious liberty, and to ignoring the violent persecution of Christians abroadâall in the interests of pushing his radical social views on the world.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom of religion is defined as the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.
Religious freedom is a right approximately 70 percent of the world does not enjoy, including most of the 12 to 17 million Christians in the Middle East.
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Throughout that region, Christians are treated as unwelcome intruders at best and mortal enemies at worst. The situation may be worst in Iraq, where, ironically, Christianity predates Islam. Iraqi Christians are mostly Chaldean Catholics and Protestant Assyrians. They face severe, systematic, and ongoing persecution. In fact, the terms “extinction”
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and “religious cleansing”
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have been used by those who know the situation best to describe the plight of Iraq's Christians. Pope Benedict XVI has said Iraq's Christians are experiencing an “authentic martyrdom.”
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Throughout that region, Christians are treated as unwelcome intruders at best and mortal enemies at worst. The situation may be worst in Iraq, where, ironically, Christianity predates Islam. Iraqi Christians are mostly Chaldean Catholics and Protestant Assyrians. They face severe, systematic, and ongoing persecution. In fact, the terms “extinction”
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and “religious cleansing”
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have been used by those who know the situation best to describe the plight of Iraq's Christians. Pope Benedict XVI has said Iraq's Christians are experiencing an “authentic martyrdom.”
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Iraq's Christians have seen their churches looted, desecrated, and destroyed, and their leaders kidnapped, murdered, or both. Christians have been forced to pay higher taxes than Muslims and have been barred from voting. “We are seeing another, the umpteenth, attack against Christians,” Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk Emil Nona said in 2010. “The violence continues without relief.”
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If liberals want to witness the real war on women, it's happening not in the student pharmacies of elite western private law schools, but in the non-Christian, non-Jewish areas of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa where women are treated as property. Christian women have become a particular target in Iraq, where they are commonly threatened with rape if they don't convert to Islam.
Many Christians are compelled to pay the
jizya
, an Islamic tax levied on non-Muslims for “protection” by local extremist Muslim groups. Attacks and threats against Iraq's Christians constitute what Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, primate of the Chaldean Catholic Church, has called “open persecution as in the early centuries of the Church.”
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jizya
, an Islamic tax levied on non-Muslims for “protection” by local extremist Muslim groups. Attacks and threats against Iraq's Christians constitute what Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, primate of the Chaldean Catholic Church, has called “open persecution as in the early centuries of the Church.”
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In 2009, the Reverend Jean Benjamin Sleiman, Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, told the
New York Times, “
I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East.”
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New York Times, “
I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East.”
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The Iraqi constitution, ratified in 2005, institutionalizes discrimination against non-Muslims. It states, “Islam is the official religion of the state and is a foundation source of legislation,” and that “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.”
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Conditions have gotten so bad that the U.S. Congress recently passed a resolution calling on the Iraqi government to investigate and report on abuses against Iraq's minority communities, including its Christians.
Iraq's Christians aren't alone in facing systematic violent persecution. The “Arab Spring” uprisings have made millions of Christians vulnerable throughout the Middle East. In Egypt, for instance, the transitional government has failed to protect religious minorities, especially Coptic Christians, from deadly attacks at a time when minority communities have been increasingly vulnerable. And Christian converts continue to face death sentences in Iran and Afghanistan.
In December 2011, Catholic Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican's secretary for Relations with States, estimated that there are more than 200 million Christians who face persecution around the world.
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The essential problem is that many countries with Muslim governments or Muslim majorities do not recognize freedom of conscience, either in principle or in practice. Other problems include state-sponsored extremist ideology and education, and corrupt law enforcement and legal systems that allow crimes against religious minorities to go unpunished.
Every year, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) publishes a report. Established by Congress in 1998, the USCIRF is responsible for monitoring and reporting to the president about religious freedom worldwide. Its role is not only to collect facts about religious freedom internationally, but also to suggest how U.S. foreign policy can promote religious freedom.
USCIRF's 2012 report, which runs 337 pages, lays out the scope of the problem in the introduction:
Over the past year, while economic woes captured world headlines, an ongoing crisis of equal breadth and scope frequently went unnoticed. Across the global landscape, the pivotal human right of religious freedom was under escalating attack. To an alarming extent, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief was being curtailed, often threatening the safety and survival of innocent persons, including members of religious minorities.
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In 2012, the USCIRF designated sixteen countries as CPCsâ“countries of particular concern”âwith governments that have engaged in or tolerated “particularly severe” violations of religious freedom, including systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations such as torture, prolonged detention without charges, disappearances, or other “flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of the person.”
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