redblueamerica.com

As a serious practicing Christian I have visited many churches and have experienced many differences in worship. Even though I am a white, northern, Conservative Baptist, I have enjoyed visiting charasmatic churches and black churches because of the joy and exhuberence they display in praising God. I have never heard the kind of preaching that Obama's spiritual leader is guilty of in any of the churches I visited. If I had, I would have quickly walked out of the service I was attending.

What Jeramiah Wright preaches is not the Christian message. It is clearly political and promotes a victim mentality and hatred. I would not subject myself or my family to even one sermon let alone 20 years of faithful attendance. The fact that Obama could and did stay for 20 years speaks volumes of where his head and heart are at.

Obama's crazy uncle excuse is very weak. We are stuck with a close relative whether they are good or bad. In Chicago you are not stuck with a particular pastor. There are enough churches that you can be very selective about where you attend.

It is obvious to me that Obama is not worthy to be the first black president of a country that is made up of people of all colors. This long time association indicates that his public face and persona is fraudulent and deceptive. I personally fear the result if he would ever achieve the reins of power.
Bindare4u

The great Joe Knippenberg has assembled a clearinghouse of insightful commentary on Obama's theologico-political problem going back a couple of years.

As I tried to stress with Joel on today's podcast, the issue with Wright and Obama isn't so much theological as political. But I also recognize that Obama has more than any Democratic candidate in recent years infused his campaign rhetoric with Biblical references and imagery. Knippenberg elucidates and expands on my own crudely formed view:

I once thought (Obama) might be willing to test the limit of faithful witness in the Democratic Party, to say "hey, we’re all brothers and sisters; let’s respect our differences and find a way to take seriously the concerns of folk who care about the unborn, who worry that we’re playing God when we give carte blanche to the stem cell researchers, and who have honest moral scruples about same-sex marriage." He might not agree with any of these positions, as they’re expressed by religious conservatives, but to hold him to the same standard that he holds those he criticizes, he shouldn’t demonize and dismiss them.

In the end, however, Obama isn’t willing to push the envelope. He wants the support of secular Democrats and religious liberals, and if he has to caricature religious conservatives to do so, so be it. For his current political purposes, which clearly trump his "conscientious" religious views (which makes him no different from those on the faith-based right he criticizes), the only religious witness that can have a seat at the national table is that of the religious Left. I’m disappointed, but not at all surprised.

Knippenberg is, as always, well worth reading.