Perilous Times
MUSLIM, CHRISTIAN, OR MARXIST?
By Cliff Kincaid
August 24, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
When questions came up during the campaign about Barack Obama’s
religious affiliation, his aides flatly asserted that he was a
“practicing Christian” and was “baptized” in the Trinity United Church
of Christ. However, some of the same questions have come up again in
the wake of opinion polls finding people confused about Obama’s
religious identity. Our media cannot understand the confusion.
For most in the media, it is cut-and-dried: Obama is a Christian.
People who don’t believe it are dumb or misled.
But calling yourself something is not the same thing as proving it is
the case. This claim deserves to be scrutinized, even when it involves
a sensitive and personal matter such as religious belief.
Unfortunately for Obama and his backers, the same Obama campaign
apparatus which claimed that he is a baptized Christian asserted that
the mysterious “Frank” in Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, was just
a black civil rights activist. It turned out that “Frank” was Frank
Marshall Davis, a Communist Party member under surveillance by the FBI
who served as a mentor for a young Obama in Hawaii. The 600-page FBI
file on Davis even suggests he was an espionage agent on behalf of the
Soviet Union.
Dupes, a forthcoming book by Professor Paul Kengor, promises to take
another close look at Obama’s Frank Marshall Davis connection.
So what the Obama presidential campaign says about Obama’s religious
affiliation is not something to be taken at face value. They have a
vested interest in making Obama look more acceptable to the American
people.
As President, he has gone to church only a few times, which undermines
the claim that he is a practicing Christian. People see him playing
golf on Sunday; they don’t see him going to church.
In fact, however, being a Christian is not just a function of attending
church services. Rather, it is related to being baptized. Did this
critical development occur in Obama’s life?
In this context, it is important to take a look at what Obama’s own
books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, say about the
President’s religion, or lack thereof.
He acknowledges in Dreams that his grandfather was a Muslim (page 104)
and that he spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia studying
the Koran (page 154). In The Audacity of Hope, he says (page 204) that
“my father had been raised a Muslim” but that by the time he met his
mother, his father was a “confirmed atheist.”
His stepfather was not particularly religious and his mother professed
“secularism,” Obama wrote (pages 204-205), but as a child he went to a
“predominantly Muslim school,” after being first sent to a Catholic
school. His mother, he said, was concerned about him learning math, not
religion.
Obama’s reference to being baptized is found in his second book, The
Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, not in Dreams, published in 1995.
Obama wrote on page 208, “I was finally able to walk down the aisle of
Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.”
Traditionally, Christianity teaches that baptism is a sacrament
involving the use of water to signify acceptance of Jesus Christ and
the Holy Spirit. Since Obama was not born and baptized a Christian, in
order to become a Christian he had to enter into the sacrament of
baptism some time later in life.
In this regard, Obama does not indicate anywhere in his books that he
came into contact with what Christians regard as the “living water.”
Instead, he says that, in his baptism, he made “a choice,” knelt
beneath a cross, and “felt God’s spirit beckoning.” He said, “I
submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His
truth.”
This sounds like a powerful religious experience but it is not what
Christians regard as baptism.
In Dreams from My Father, Obama discusses his pastor, Jeremiah Wright,
noting that he had been “dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black
nationalism in the sixties” but that “the call of faith had apparently
remained” and that he went on to study religion, including “the black
liberation theologians.” For his part, Obama visited Wright to discuss
membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ as an extension of
his community organizing activities and the hope that he could get
“involvement” in this effort from churches like Wright’s.
As Obama contacted the churches and their ministers, he reveals that
they thought he was a Muslim (page 279) or, he jokes, an Irishman,
“O’Bama.”
Obama talks about hearing a Wright sermon, “The Audacity of Hope,”
which inspired the title of his second book. However, there is no
mention of any baptism in this—his first—book. The reference to being
baptized came in the second book, as Obama was preparing to launch his
presidential campaign. The timing is significant.
These are the facts as Obama himself reported them. So how have the
media handled them? Needless to say, there has been no serious
investigation into whether the claims are true and what they mean.
“Obama’s religious biography is unconventional and politically
problematic,” Newsweek’s Lisa Miller reported. “Born to a
Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African
father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of
spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a
Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United
Church of Christ in Chicago.”
The phrase, “having been baptized,” is apparently based on Obama’s
claim about being baptized. Our major media haven’t questioned the
claim.
Miller went on to say, “His baptism presents its own problems. The
senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama’s baptism was the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable
TV…”
Notice the formulation, “at the time of Obama’s baptism.” She carefully
does not say that Wright performed the baptism. In fact, there’s no
evidence it was a baptism in the traditional sense that it was
performed by Wright or anybody else. It looks like Obama walked down
the aisle and made a profession of faith. That is not a Christian
baptism.
The Canada Free Press published a very interesting article in February
by Madeline Brooks, who asked, “Where is the baptism certificate? We do
not see one because there was no baptism. That central part of
Christianity was not required at Obama’s former church, the Trinity
United Church of Christ, during the years Obama attended…”
She cites the research of a pastor, Usama Dakdok, who had called
Obama’s church to ask about membership:
“Do I have to be baptized to join the church?” asked Pastor Dakdok.
“No, you don’t,” was the answer. “You can be a member without being
baptized.”
“And what exactly is required to become a member?” The answer: “You
attend two Sunday school classes in a row about membership, and then
you walk the aisle.”
Walk down the aisle? That sounds exactly what Obama described in his
book. This is how one becomes a member. But it is not a baptism into
Christianity.
“I called the Trinity United Church of Christ and they confirmed that
baptism is merely optional for members,” Brooks added.
Pastor Dakdok reports that he also asked a spokesperson for Trinity,
the membership director:
“If I am a Muslim man, and I believe in the prophet Mohammed, peace be
upon him, but I also believe in the prophet Jesus, do I have to give up
my Islamic faith to join your church?”
The answer was, “Absolutely not! We have so many members of our
church who are Muslims.”
Dakdok asked the Trinity spokesperson, “Is that how Senator Barack
Obama became a member?” The membership director of the church refused
to answer.
Madeline Brooks calls this “Muslim Christianity,” which she says is
theologically impossible.
In fact, the contradictions don’t end there. Obama’s pastor for 20
years, Jeremiah Wright, could be described as a “Marxist Christian,”
which is also theoretically impossible, since Marxism is materialistic
and atheistic. Yet, as we revealed last November, Wright gave a speech
in which he praised Marxism and faulted the media for claiming that
communism and Christianity were somehow opposed to one another.
So the question regarding Obama is not just whether he is a Muslim but
a Marxist, based not only on his attendance at Jeremiah Wright’s
unusual church but the influence exercised over him during his
growing-up years by Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
Dakdok, who was brought up in Egypt, a Muslim country, is adamant that
Obama is a Muslim, based on the fact that his birth father was a Muslim
and that there is no evidence that Obama ever specifically rejected
Islam. Christian radio host Brannon Howse interviewed Dakdok, at the
urging of conservative columnist David Limbaugh, brother of the
national talk show host, Rush Limbaugh. Dakdok was also interviewed
recently on Stacy Harp’s Christian radio show. He speaks around the
country in front of Christian audiences.
While Obama may have been a Muslim by birth, that doesn’t mean that he
accepts the Muslim faith or philosophy. Instead, Islam may be seen as
just another religion/ideology that can be used for his own political
purposes.
The case for Obama being a Marxist is far more convincing. He was
exposed to Marxist ideology in church under Wright, as well as from
Frank Marshall Davis.
The American people now seem to get it, even though the truth about
Obama’s relationship with Davis has never been thoroughly explored by
the major media. A poll from the Democracy Corps, a Democratic Party
firm, found that 55 percent said that Obama could accurately be
described as a socialist.
This is far more than the number of people who see him as a Muslim.
If and when the media start examining the Frank Marshall Davis
connection, the “socialist” label could take on more sinister
connotations.
This is why, of course, they will avoid it.