Is Obama Really A Christian?

While driving to the airport yesterday morning, I was listening to the Rick Roberts radio show. During hour #3 or #4, one caller insisted that Barack Obama is a Muslim. He cited Snopes.com as the source for his information.

Roberts countered the callers claim by mentioning that Obama is a member of a Christian church - Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. I will have a lot more to reveal about that church a bit later in this post.

The radio show caller mistakenly claimed that Obama took his oath as senator with his hand on the Koran. He didn't. It was Keith Ellison who did that. (stunning that Ellison was permitted to do that...isn't it?)

The exchange and commentary during the show was quite humorous at times. And, it appears that the radio host is quite impressed with Obama. He thinks that Obama will end up getting the Democratic nomination.

Last evening, I was following links to other blogs and found some disturbing information about Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.

Please remember, I am merely reporting what was written at the site. Please don't come back and call me a racist.

Here is a link to the original post: Obama surging in New Hampshire.

Here is part of the comment conversation that I thought was quite troubling:

27. FmrMarine January 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am
neocon

THIS is an evangelical ???
this is PART of their website

More of a CULT than evangelical.

Trinity United Church of Christ

About Us

We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.

Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee chaired by Vallmer Jordan in 1981. We believe in the following 12 precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They must reflect on the following concepts:

1. Commitment to God
2. Commitment to the Black Community
3. Commitment to the Black Family
4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
6. Adherence to the Black Work Ethic
7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”
9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to
the Black Community
10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for
Strengthening and Supporting Black Institutions
11. Pledge allegiance to all Black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black
Value System
12. Personal commitment to embracement of the Black Value System.

28. neocon January 6th, 2008 at 10:51 am
11. Pledge allegiance to all Black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System

I can’t disagree with you FmrMarine. Shouldn’t America, and the world be concerned that Obama would seek counsel from his church? I mean that is the concern of the uber-liberals in re: to Huckabee, right?

Well, #11 above should definitely have them concerned. Unless they’re hypocrites.

29. FmrMarine January 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Maybe this is why he refused to face the flag and put his hand over his heart.

He is nothing more than a half black david duke, that the media and liberals are falling on their face and worshiping, BECAUSE of his color….NOTHING more , he is an empty suit, and a racist.

30. sleepygene January 6th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Project much marine. sheeesh.

31. Eric T January 6th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Racism is wrong!
The Libs seem to love it. So let’s talk about it.

If we are going to allow black racism let’s take a good close look at what it leads to.

According to the FBI UCR report, about 1,700 White on Black hate crimes, there were nearly 2 million Black on White crimes. Yet, while the statistics for hate crimes receive extensive media coverage, the statistics for interracial crimes are rarely mentioned

There are 20,000 black-on-white rapes every year in the US, but fewer than 100 white-on-black rapes.

Editor note: that works out to about 54 black on white rapes per day according to available statistics from 1999.

One cannot help but notice where that church's true agenda resides.

For a church that labels itself "Christian," I did not see "A commitment to Jesus Christ" anywhere on that list...did you?

I didn't see anything about "a commitment to God's Word, the Bible" anywhere on that list...did you?

I did not see Jesus' commandment to "go into all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," did you?

I did not see any motivation or "commitment" to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ...did you?

Back to the Snopes.com article.

My blogging friend Anna once shared that Snopes is a partisan website that leans liberal and Democratic. No wonder they worked so frantically to dispel the "rumors" about Obama's Muslim roots.

I recall that during the "he's a Muslim;" "no he's not" back and forth between Rick Roberts and the caller on the radio show yesterday, the caller mentioned that (paraphased) "one doesn't leave the Muslim faith as an apostate without being a lethal target for doing so."

When I read the snopes article this morning, it appears to me that maybe, quite possibly, if it is true that Obama is not a follower of Islam and the Koran, perhaps it is more likely that he is as skeptic; maybe even an agnostic or full-blown atheist (like his mother).

Obama's own words led me to think this way.

Of his mother's religious views, Obama wrote:

For my mother, organized religion to often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.

This isn't to say that she provided me with no religious instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the world's great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education. In our household, the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on shelves alongside book of Greek and Norse and African Mythology. On Easter or Christmas Day, my mother might drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained commitment on my part. Religious was an expression of human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring - just one of the many ways - and not one of the best ways that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives.

In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon to be treated with a suitable respect, but with a suitable detachment as well.

In an April 2004 Chicago Sun-Times article, note how Obama tells about his "personal relationship with Jesus Christ":

Obama is unapologetic in saying he has a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ." As a sign of that relationship, he says, he walked down the aisle of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ in response to the reverend Jeremiah Wright's altar call one Sunday morning about 16 years ago.

The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point where some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved", "transformed," washed in the blood. But Obama wants to clarify what truly happened.

"It wasn't an epiphany," he says of that public profession of faith. "It was much more of a gradual process for me. I know there are some people who fall out. Which is wonderful. God bless them...I think it was just a moment to certify or publicly affirm a growing faith in me."

I have questions. Does this sound like a genuine, born-again in Jesus Christ testimony?

Jesus said that "we MUST be born again." His words, not mine.

My questions:

What did Obama mean when he stated, "it wasn't an epiphany?"

What was he talking about when he stated, "I know that some people fall out?"

And, his comment that walking up that aisle was "just a moment to certify a growing 'faith' within himself?" Faith in whom?

Notice, also, that the newspaper interviewer wrote this part:

"The politician could have ended his spiritual tale right there, at the point where some people might assume his life changed, when he got "saved", "transformed," washed in the blood."

Spiritual tale?

Some people might assume his life changed?

I want to share a portion of the book, "The Truth War" that deals with how some people can do a passable job of imitating the fruit of the Spirit.

MacArthur:

They can disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). They seem quite sincere. They look and sound and seem harmless enough.

Obama appears have all of these positive qualities and more. However, after reading the list of "commitments" espoused by his church, I fear, unfortunately, that the church could be an apostate one.

More questions.

Where is the proclamation of the gospel and the preaching of the cross of Jesus Christ?

Why isn't it on that list?

Where is the adherence to God's Word, the Bible?

MacArthur:

Jude 12 in some English translations refers to these imposters as "spots in your love feasts" (v. 12). The Greek word translated "spots" is a very specific term often used to signify dangerous reefs in the sea, hidden just under the water's surface. In other words, these false teachers represented a deadly spiritual hazard. They deliberately lay in wait. They were hard to spot. But they were capable of causing disastrous spiritual shipwrecks (cf. 1 Timothy 1:19).

The radical reputation of Obama's pastor is well known. When I read the above portion of MacArthur's book, I couldn't help but think about that pastor.

MacArthur:

Yet Jude says, "In your love feasts...they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves" (v. 12). The term love feasts is a reference to the Lord's Table ordinance established by Christ for the church and the common meal that accompanied it. So Jude was speaking about people inside the church, familiar communicants at the table, who looked safe, seemed nice enough, and were well known to people in the church. But in reality, they were counterfeit Christians with an evil agenda.

Can someone like that be even more dangerous than the hostile critic who stands outside the church and overtly opposes everything the Bible teaches? Absolutely. False teachers and doctrinal saboteurs inside the church have always confused more people and done more damage than open adversaries on the outside. Is an attacking enemy who promises his arrival in advance and wears a uniform for easy identification as dangerous as a terrorist who is hidden and acts with deadly surprise? The answer is obvious.

Bottom line. If we can't trust an individual to be honest about his/her true religious beliefs, then how can we trust him/her to lead our great nation?

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Additional article links:

The audacity of apostasy: Barack Obama’s Muslim links

Columnist Says Barack Obama 'Lied To The American People;' Asks Publisher to Withdraw Obama's Book

Why Jesus Would Not Vote for Barack Obama

Barack Obama's Top Ten Fabrications

Confirmed: Barack Obama Practiced Islam

Discover the Networks.org
[Note: DOZENS of additional article links listed on the left side of the page.]

Barack Obama, Man of Faith

Is Barack Obama Ideologically Muslim?

Barack Obama and Islamic Apostasy