The joy of American religious discourse is that the media has us divided into Pentecostals and atheists. You either carry around a Confederate flag, an AR-15 and say ‘Praise Jebus!’ all day or you put up statues of Baphomet and clean Cheetos out of your neckbeard while calling religious people ‘Sheeple.’ There is no middle ground. Since Obama doesn’t have a Confederate flag, it’s obvious he must be an atheist.
Of course, that false dichotomy ignores the fact that we mainlines have been quietly plugging along for years doing our mainline thing where we pretty boringly go to a quiet church on Sunday where they sing 200 year old songs and the pastor tells us to volunteer at the local homeless shelter more often. We believe in God, but probably don’t say much about Him to other people because we don’t want to hurt your feelings if you don’t. If you asked us, we’d probably want to hear your opinion on the subject first. We probably have never asked you to come to our church since that’s presumptuous and could be insulting, although maybe you got an invite to a church dinner or similar less threatening function. We pray before our meals, but rarely in public or at most it will be a quiet nod of the head for a second and we hope we aren’t noticed. We volunteer constantly, but almost never use our church name because it would look like bragging. We’re slowly dying because we live in a culture of extremes where the middle is seen as compromising and weak, so we plug along quietly in the middle waiting for the older generation to die off and take our churches with it. So it goes.
I think I’ve figured it out. I don’t know what the religion is called, but I believe he follows a religion that a former boss of mine followed.
My boss called his religion “The Secret,” and regarded the “documentary” What The Bleep Do We Know as a life-changing spiritual message.
Not unlike Trump, Boss believed that truth was a matter of your point-of-view, and if you kept repeating something that wasn’t true long enough, and/or living your life as if it is true, then the Universe will make it true for you.
Boss, for example, wanted a new ride. So as he drove to work he just pretended, in his mind, that he was driving a new car, not the hunk of junk he had. Eventually he would have a new ride just on the basis of believing in it. Trump, for example, really wants a border wall. So he tweets that the border wall is already under construction (it isn’t), that it’s going to be glorious (it’s going to be nonexistent), and so on.
“Speak it into existence,” as the old saying goes.
So that’s my take: Trump is probably culturally Christian (it plays well to Republican voters), but probably believes in The Power Of Positive Thinking or whatever it’s going by now.
Indeed. So probably because Obama doesn’t talk about his Church or God every 5 minutes, he’s assumed atheist. I guess I’m probably thought of the same by some, even though I go to Church every Sunday and a few Wednesdays and Thursdays for meetings. Maybe we just need cool t-shirts (though speaking of such, my “also with y’all” t-shirt gets a lot of play)?
If you read about Obama’s religious history, you’ll find that his father was an atheist and his mother was hardly traditionally religious. I was under the impression that he was an atheist when young, and then converted. The question is whether the conversion was true or politically expedient.
He doesn’t sound like an atheist, but he couldn’t get elected to anything (unless he lived in my district) if he did sound like one.
Hillary is right smack dab in the mainstream. Though you wouldn’t know it from the fundamentalist moron Trumpists. They bray louder than you reasonable folks.
Yep, a regular attendee at Foundry United Methodist Church when she was in Washington, a truly delightful congregation just north of downtown. Fun fact, we were in DC the week after the 2016 elections and the sermon at Foundry was about dealing with grief and they had opened the doors on Wednesday after the elections for mourning and counseling. One of my favorite congregations to visit when I’m in DC.
Elizabeth Warren is one of ours too. A UMC Sunday School teacher, but these days she flits from church to church on Sundays for political reasons. Spends a lot of time in black Baptist churches.
IMO, if you listen to his Grace speech after the Charleston massacre, that’s the words (and intonation) of someone who is deeply religious or one of the best actors in history. I go for the former.
As the proverb goes, it’s all about sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it licked.
To me, Obama has always sounded like what he claims to be: a UCC Christian. Every member I know is comparatively liberal politically, and it’s a “thoughtful” faith in my experience. Then again, since he attended the church regularly since 1991, is that a sincere internalization of faith or just picking up on how people act out of political necessity? Impossible to say, really, though he’s never really given me cause to call him a hypocrite.
This reflects on how I see Trump as well. His actions and demeanor, especially when in worship situations, consistently remind me of people who may identify as a Christian of some stripe in terms of how they check a box, but who rarely attend services and, when they do, consider themselves more spectators than participants. Trump has likely checked the Presbyterian box all his life (and, thus, is not an “atheist” in the sense of having made a declaration to that effect), but is no more a Presbyterian than I am a third baseman. I haven’t played baseball for over 30 years. I still identify with the hot corner in a way, but I wouldn’t know what to do in a meaningful sense if the local manager called me out of the stands to fill in.