How Do We Know If Obama Is Christian? - Comments (10)

Category: Applied,Articles,Venture in Africa
Author: John Malone
Date: 20th August, 2010 @ 07:24:51 AM

Due to the controversy surrounding the faith of Barack Obama, a.k.a. Barry Soetoro, a.k.a. POTUS, the subject arises of how can we know if someone is a Christian or not.

Listening to the pundits, such as Rush Limbaugh, the matter becomes more confusing, not less. For instance, yesterday Limbaugh was citing a poll that fewer and fewer Americans believe Obama is a Christian, and more and more of them think he is a Muslim. Today, Limbaugh is claiming that President Clinton was very obviously a Christian. This coming from a guy that couldn’t tell you the second thing about “Christian,” and yet Christians listen to him far more than they do their own preachers.

I seem to remember that, during the campaign of 2008, the subject of Obama’s Christianity arose. Now, In American politics, the quality of someone’s Christian faith doesn’t really arise in large public discussions. All sorts of sectarian church memberships are accepted as Christian, and pretty much that is that. President Reagan ran as a Christian, and then stories emerged that he became one after he was shot. President Bush was accorded Christian standing on the basis of his Episcopalian church affiliation, and became better known when he claimed in the public debates that Jesus Christ was the most influential person to him because “He changed my life.” Nixon was a Quaker. Kennedy was Catholic. And so forth.

If I remember correctly, the question of Obama’s Christianity arose at the time of the Iowa caucuses, and our own Nebraska Senator former Governor Ben Nelson stepped up to certify to us that Obama was a Christian. Forget for the moment that Nelson’s Christian credentials in Nebraska come as a surprise to many of us. Among Christian circles in which I have moved in Omaha, Nelson has ridden in on the Christian coattails of politically and socially ambitious Christian women, one of whom has made her “Christian career” to accept Roman Catholics into Bible-teaching churches, even to the point of placing them occasionally in the pulpit.

So, from my view, Obama’s Christian testimony comes from someone – a US Senator! – whose Christian testimony comes from a woman that I know, and her friends, who will admit anyone that says, “I believe in God, and I am a Christian” to actually be a Christian.

Now my standard of Christian testimony is no narrower than the Bible’s. When Jesus {asked his disciples|Mat 16:13-17} who people said He was, and then who THEY said He was, Peter answered simply, and correctly. When Jesus told Martha, at the occasion of her brother Lazarus’ death and subsequent resurrection from the dead, that He is “the resurrection, and the life,” she {correctly answered him|Jo 11:25-27}, just as Peter did.

I have traveled Obama’s fatherland extensively, having been involved in Kenya as a business man and preacher for above 17 years now. During the campaign, while I was in Kenya, every man-Njoroge of them believed Obama was a Kenyan. They did not understand the unique provision in US constitutional law concerning natural birth. In fact, in public marketplaces, unknown Kenyans would come up to me, and simply shout “OBAMA!” into my face. They named large beers after him. In the US, you may run down to the nearby gas station or convenient mart for a “40.” In Kenyan bars, and slums, guys were knocking down “Obamas.” Beyond merely being Kenyan, Obama is regarded there as a Luo. In fact, after the US-supported (some even say sponsored) referendum to alter the Kenyan constitution – held on Obama’s birthday – Obama is qualified to be the President of Kenya. While there is no question about that, questions still linger whether he’s qualified by his birth, or even citizenship, to be President of the United States.

Obama is no doubt beholding to his Luo tribesmen, who at the very least can be expected to get his back if anyone besides Jerome Corsi travels there to investigate. Corsi was thrown out of the country. During the Kenyan elections, when the controversy arose concerning rigged results, it was the US that pressed Luo “cousin” Raila Odinga – a physically powerful man who loves race cars, was trained in Russia, and for years was rumored to be “KGB” – into a hastily created “Prime Minister” position in order to give the second largest tribe in Kenya a stake in the government, devolve the Kenyan presidency, and satisfy the militant Luo political forces which threatened to set the nation ablaze after Mwai Kibaki’s rigging-stained “election.”

Odinga’s supporters insist to this day he won the election. He was aided and abetted in his campaign not only by Obama visits, but by the political strategies designed by Dick Morris. Morris seems to pose these days as if conservative, but it puzzles me because he was a chief Clinton strategist. Well, he’s yesterday’s liberal, so I suppose now he IS a conservative.

It’s amazing to me that, in America, the most powerful nation on earth, we are being served up consecutive Democratic Presidents with questionable parentages. What a coincidence. What an anomaly. Who would have ever guessed?

But Obama’s US citizenship credentials are only disturbing at an earthly level. We who study the Scriptures understand that in the times we live, there will be all sorts of problematic people running about in our times, even including {traitors|2Ti 3:1-5} in the list.

His credentials as a Christian are far, far more suspect, but much more easily sorted out. There must be some kind of profession of faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the credential, and the only credential. That profession is not about whether or not one is “Christian.” {Other people called believers “Christians.”|Acts 11:26} Christians professed the Lord Jesus Christ for Who He is. Historically, that is done in Christian baptism.

We know Obama was born to a Kenyan father. Reportedly, he was a Muslim, even if a nominal one. I was born to a Roman Catholic father, ad adult “convert” who had no faith, and joined that organization to make my mom and her family happy. That organization inducted me into its membership by way of infant christening, and from there I was indoctrinated in the Roman Catholic religion. I don’t know anything about Muslim rites at birth, but I understand if you’re born to a Muslim father, you’re accepted as a Muslim, at least by them. Then, Obama was reportedly later adopted as Barry Soetoro, and was indoctrinated in Islam. In my case, I became a Christian – by profession alone – in 1975. I was immersed in water a couple of years later, making a public statement of my faith before assembled witnesses.

Does Obama have a baptism record of any kind? Someone had to be watching his baptism, if indeed he was baptized. “Barack Obama, have you been baptized since you believed?” Obama’s home church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, which has a relatively stringent view of adult baptism, requiring as they do the recitation and belief of the Apostle’s Creed. At Easter time, they ask their members to recite it. I understand Obama can recite in clear Arabic whatever one of the five “prayers” are that Muslims recite daily. I wonder if he would recite the Apostle’s Creed, like any good UCC member would do?

I find it very interesting that Obama’s home church is just now featuring former Omaha Salem Baptist Church pastor Maurice Watson on their web site. While I was not happy to learn of Watson’s Jesuit training at Creighton University, when I asked him directly about his faith not so many years ago, he was quick to tell me that, concerning salvation, he believed in “sola fide (faith alone)” and “sola scriptura (Scripture alone).” That’s not too far from the very solid “Grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone.” Watson conducted “revival” meetings at Obama’a former home church.

So Trinity (Chicago) UCC at least welcomes someone whose first thought is not “Liberation Theology,” which, by the way, has its roots in Jesuit teaching. Large churches like Chicago’s Trinity are a complex mix within their congregations. No black church in America can long even call itself “Christian,” and feature ONLY the kind of politically charged preaching of a Jeremiah Wright, or a Jesse Jackson, or a Martin Luther King, Jr. Nevertheless, this particular church, where, let’s face it, people like Barack Obama probably had only the most tangential attachment, is thoroughly imbued with eth leaven of Herod, and therefore has as its primary focus not the Scriptures of God, but the plans and political strategies of men.

Just like large churches that are predominately white, large black churches that appeal to the growing black middle and upper middle classes feature a jumbled mess of doctrine, and a thorny mix of saved and lost.

If Obama is Christian, he has something of the kind of experience of faith in Christ that all Christians have. “Once I was lost, now I’m found.” It would be nice to trace it out historically. People should ask him plainly when he first made a profession of faith in Christ, and if he was baptized, when and where. Simple questions, and easy answers for a Christian. But if that’s too complex, and he has fuzzy recollections, or lack of knowledge, that’s still no problem.

Someone should just ask him the simple question posed to Peter by Jesus Christ: “Who do YOU say that I am?” That will settle the whole issue.

Will someone ask him? I doubt it.

10 Comments » Leave a comment