Today, May 2, is designated as the National Day of Prayer and has been officially observed every year since 1952. There are massive public prayer gatherings all over the nation today, which is great.
Two thoughts as I ponder this day and what it says about our culture:
1. Participate in these gatherings for the right reasons, not just to make a show. Matthew Paul Turner put it perfectly, borrowing the form of Matthew 6:5-6:
And when you pray on National Day of Prayer, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to post about their praying on Facebook and Twitter and take pictures of themselves kneeling beside flags and in groups so they can be seen by others on Instagram. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.
2. Let your prayer motivate you to action. If you attend a downtown prayer rally but ignore half a dozen homeless people as you walk back to your car, then you've wasted your time. Let your prayer open your heart to see the person at your job or in your school who is lonely and excluded. As the apostle James wrote (James 2:14-17), your faith isn't alive unless it leads you to action.
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Thursday, April 09, 2009
We're Podcasting!
Introducing the brand new The Truth As Best I Know It Podcast.
Just like the blog, the podcast explores how the Christian faith works in the lives of twenty first century people.
In the first episode, "Words, Words, Words", Matt and Jessica discuss the role of language, particularly certain religious buzzwords, in people's faith today. Have certain words and phrases outlived their usefulness or is there room to reclaim them into new contexts?
In this episode we reference a book by Susan Isaacs, Angry Conversations With God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir. You can find more information about the book and purchase it here.
Enjoy the podcast and leave any comments, questions, or suggestions for future episodes here on the blog.
(PS- we're working on getting the podcast on iTunes. If you're a tech savvy person and have any suggestions as to how to make the recording better, please share them.)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Review: The Faith of Barack Obama
Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama, like his earlier works on George W. Bush and The American Soldier, respectively, seeks to provide a short, accessible theological biography of an important figure in modern American history. Much treatment, scholarly and otherwise, has been given to Obama’s racial background, his educational influences, and his early political career in Chicago. But very little serious treatment (i.e. not scare-tactic propaganda) has been given to his faith background.
Mansfield attempts, and largely succeeds in, examining Obama’s varied religious influences in as objective a manner as possible. His first chapter explores Obama’s childhood being raised by his mother and grandparents who, while being more or less agnostic themselves, nevertheless respected the value of religion in others’ lives and exposed young Barack to a variety of religious traditions. Mansfield also dives into Obama’s time living in Indonesia with his step-father, where he attended a secular school and learned about Islam as a civil religion, much the way children in the United States are exposed to aspects of Christianity as a civil religion. Mansfield does a very skillful job in refuting the largely discredited charge that Obama is a Muslim, since he left Indonesia before reaching the age when young men would choose to embrace the faith for themselves.
Perhaps the most valuable part in the entire book is the chapter where Mansfield explores the influence of the black church, and specifically of Jeremiah Wright, on Obama’s faith development. Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama attended for more than two decades, was uniquely able to nurture Obama’s faith journey because of its deep commitment to political activism and social justice- concerns Obama shared when he came to the church. As for Wright, Mansfield paints a very nuanced picture of him as a man of his generation, shaped by the struggle for civil rights, harboring deep suspicion of the government because of grave injustices like the Tuskegee experiments, and greatly influenced by the rise of the Black Liberation Theology of James Cone. Obama is a man of a different generation that, sharing the same concerns of their predecessors and carrying on their struggle, is not as angry and thus more able to gain acceptance in white society. Mansfield sums up the influence of Wright on Obama by saying, “To be a member of a church is not necessarily to descend into mindlessness, and a mind as fine as Obama’s is less likely to accept ideas unexamined than most.” (pg. 67)
The journalistic skill and subtlety with which Mansfield examines Obama’s background makes most of the book excellent reading. It is also what makes one particular chapter, “Four Faces of Faith” so disappointing. This chapter feels extremely out of place and makes this reader wonder if it is something of a last minute addition to the book. In it, Mansfield takes the four most prominent figures of the 2008 election cycle, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, and paints a picture of them as representatives of the different approaches to faith, largely defined by generational identity, in America today. (The book probably went to press before the sudden arrival of Gov. Sarah Palin on the national stage, and it would be interesting to see how Mansfield would incorporate her into this chapter).
It’s not that this chapter is not written without the usual research and insight that Mansfield generally brings to his subjects, or that the chapter contains a gross amount of political bias (even though one does sense that Mr. Mansfield was a strong McCain supporter). This chapter is disappointing because it does very little to give us a picture of who Barack Obama is as a religious person in the way the rest of the book does so skillfully. This material would have been better suited as a long form feature article, or as preparatory material for books on the faiths of Hillary Clinton and John McCain, respectively (books I’d quite like to read).
This particularly unfortunate and out-of-place chapter aside, The Faith of Barack Obama is an excellent book. Mansfield closes by suggesting that, as a representative of his generation, Barack Obama will be a transformative figure as coming generations move past old divisions and conflicts and form a new mold of racial and religious identity.
(Sidenote- Mansfield heavily references Obama’s books Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, which many readers will want to pick up after reading The Faith of Barack Obama if they have not already. These books are also well written and worth your time.)
This is the first review I'm doing as part of a blog ring for Thomas Nelson Publishers. I was provided a free copy of the book in exchange for a review on my site.
Mansfield attempts, and largely succeeds in, examining Obama’s varied religious influences in as objective a manner as possible. His first chapter explores Obama’s childhood being raised by his mother and grandparents who, while being more or less agnostic themselves, nevertheless respected the value of religion in others’ lives and exposed young Barack to a variety of religious traditions. Mansfield also dives into Obama’s time living in Indonesia with his step-father, where he attended a secular school and learned about Islam as a civil religion, much the way children in the United States are exposed to aspects of Christianity as a civil religion. Mansfield does a very skillful job in refuting the largely discredited charge that Obama is a Muslim, since he left Indonesia before reaching the age when young men would choose to embrace the faith for themselves.
Perhaps the most valuable part in the entire book is the chapter where Mansfield explores the influence of the black church, and specifically of Jeremiah Wright, on Obama’s faith development. Trinity United Church of Christ, where Obama attended for more than two decades, was uniquely able to nurture Obama’s faith journey because of its deep commitment to political activism and social justice- concerns Obama shared when he came to the church. As for Wright, Mansfield paints a very nuanced picture of him as a man of his generation, shaped by the struggle for civil rights, harboring deep suspicion of the government because of grave injustices like the Tuskegee experiments, and greatly influenced by the rise of the Black Liberation Theology of James Cone. Obama is a man of a different generation that, sharing the same concerns of their predecessors and carrying on their struggle, is not as angry and thus more able to gain acceptance in white society. Mansfield sums up the influence of Wright on Obama by saying, “To be a member of a church is not necessarily to descend into mindlessness, and a mind as fine as Obama’s is less likely to accept ideas unexamined than most.” (pg. 67)
The journalistic skill and subtlety with which Mansfield examines Obama’s background makes most of the book excellent reading. It is also what makes one particular chapter, “Four Faces of Faith” so disappointing. This chapter feels extremely out of place and makes this reader wonder if it is something of a last minute addition to the book. In it, Mansfield takes the four most prominent figures of the 2008 election cycle, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, and paints a picture of them as representatives of the different approaches to faith, largely defined by generational identity, in America today. (The book probably went to press before the sudden arrival of Gov. Sarah Palin on the national stage, and it would be interesting to see how Mansfield would incorporate her into this chapter).
It’s not that this chapter is not written without the usual research and insight that Mansfield generally brings to his subjects, or that the chapter contains a gross amount of political bias (even though one does sense that Mr. Mansfield was a strong McCain supporter). This chapter is disappointing because it does very little to give us a picture of who Barack Obama is as a religious person in the way the rest of the book does so skillfully. This material would have been better suited as a long form feature article, or as preparatory material for books on the faiths of Hillary Clinton and John McCain, respectively (books I’d quite like to read).
This particularly unfortunate and out-of-place chapter aside, The Faith of Barack Obama is an excellent book. Mansfield closes by suggesting that, as a representative of his generation, Barack Obama will be a transformative figure as coming generations move past old divisions and conflicts and form a new mold of racial and religious identity.
(Sidenote- Mansfield heavily references Obama’s books Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, which many readers will want to pick up after reading The Faith of Barack Obama if they have not already. These books are also well written and worth your time.)
This is the first review I'm doing as part of a blog ring for Thomas Nelson Publishers. I was provided a free copy of the book in exchange for a review on my site.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Faith and Politics Forum
If you didn't get the chance to see the Faith and Politics Forum on CNN last night, let me suggest you watch the highlights on Sojourners' website. It was fascinating to see the top Democratic candidates (the Republicans will have a similar forum in a few weeks) talk specifically about their faith and how it informs their political actions. I do wish each candidate had received more than fifteen minutes for questions and dialogue, but this was a good start.
I'm listing my own personal highlights from the forum, broken down by candidate. These are nothing more and nothing less than my own personal opinions based on issues that I care about. I have arrived at my views as a result of my Christian faith, but I respect and celebrate that others have arrived at their views for the exact same reasons. I hope that if your take on this forum is different than my own that we can start a respectful dialogue about these issues.
John Edwards
Edwards has long been a favorite of mine because he talks about poverty as a moral issue more than almost any other politician out there. I think he spent a little too much time in this forum touting his record on poverty issues, but I understand that he's trying to make gains in the polls.
I liked how, when asked a question about his prayer life, he said that he asked God to show him the difference between his will and God's will. I also appreciated that when he was asked what the biggest sin he ever committed was (a question that still haunts Jimmy Carter 30 years later), he artfully dodged it, admitting that he sins every day and that all sins are bad.
Barak Obama
Obama spent quite a bit of time quoting both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.- two good people to listen to. The cynical side of me wonders if he quotes them because it earns political points, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that he truly takes them to heart.
Obama made a number of nuanced points that I appreciated very much because he did his best to rise above the strategery (spelling intentional) of merely giving cute soundbites. When faced with a question about God's opinion of war, Obama said that he believed that evil exists and there are times when standing against evil requires taking up arms, but that just because a cause is just does not mean a nation always acts in a just manner, citing the extreme moral and ethical failures of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay.
Obama also made the nuanced point that personal responsibility (a favorite theme of conservatives) and communal responsibility (a favorite theme of liberals) are not mutually exclusive and that justice is only done when understandings of both spheres of responsibility work together. "I have a stake in others", he said, emphasizing that any individual who does not have opportunities to succeed is done a disservice by the whole society.
Hillary Clinton
Clinton had a very personal moment when asked how she dealt with the infidelity in her marriage, saying that she would not have made it through without her faith and people praying for her and her husband. Hillary doesn't talk much about her faith, and she explained it by saying, "I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people that wear their faith on their sleeves”. I respect that, given the extreme hypocrisy shown by those who view evangelical Christians as a voting block to be courted rather than a group whose opinions should be honored. Perhaps Clinton's reluctance to use whatever faith life she has to score political points is evidence of a profound respect for that faith and a desire not to make it something it is not.
Final Thoughts
Given that we are nearly eighteen months from the next presidential election, I have not decided on a candidate, or a party for that matter, for whom I will vote. Whenever I do come to such a decision I will not make a public endorsement of that candidate, because I believe such an endorsement would be a gross misuse of my position as a pastor. Y'all probably will be able to figure out who I'm voting for at some point, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that my vote is the vote for everyone who calls themselves a Christian.
I believe that our relationship with God is personal, but not private, and that God's opinions on political issues have a lot more to do with making sure that each of God's image bearers and all of God's creation is treated justly, rather than God taking sides with one candidate over another.
I'm listing my own personal highlights from the forum, broken down by candidate. These are nothing more and nothing less than my own personal opinions based on issues that I care about. I have arrived at my views as a result of my Christian faith, but I respect and celebrate that others have arrived at their views for the exact same reasons. I hope that if your take on this forum is different than my own that we can start a respectful dialogue about these issues.
John Edwards
Edwards has long been a favorite of mine because he talks about poverty as a moral issue more than almost any other politician out there. I think he spent a little too much time in this forum touting his record on poverty issues, but I understand that he's trying to make gains in the polls.
I liked how, when asked a question about his prayer life, he said that he asked God to show him the difference between his will and God's will. I also appreciated that when he was asked what the biggest sin he ever committed was (a question that still haunts Jimmy Carter 30 years later), he artfully dodged it, admitting that he sins every day and that all sins are bad.
Barak Obama
Obama spent quite a bit of time quoting both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.- two good people to listen to. The cynical side of me wonders if he quotes them because it earns political points, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that he truly takes them to heart.
Obama made a number of nuanced points that I appreciated very much because he did his best to rise above the strategery (spelling intentional) of merely giving cute soundbites. When faced with a question about God's opinion of war, Obama said that he believed that evil exists and there are times when standing against evil requires taking up arms, but that just because a cause is just does not mean a nation always acts in a just manner, citing the extreme moral and ethical failures of Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay.
Obama also made the nuanced point that personal responsibility (a favorite theme of conservatives) and communal responsibility (a favorite theme of liberals) are not mutually exclusive and that justice is only done when understandings of both spheres of responsibility work together. "I have a stake in others", he said, emphasizing that any individual who does not have opportunities to succeed is done a disservice by the whole society.
Hillary Clinton
Clinton had a very personal moment when asked how she dealt with the infidelity in her marriage, saying that she would not have made it through without her faith and people praying for her and her husband. Hillary doesn't talk much about her faith, and she explained it by saying, "I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people that wear their faith on their sleeves”. I respect that, given the extreme hypocrisy shown by those who view evangelical Christians as a voting block to be courted rather than a group whose opinions should be honored. Perhaps Clinton's reluctance to use whatever faith life she has to score political points is evidence of a profound respect for that faith and a desire not to make it something it is not.
Final Thoughts
Given that we are nearly eighteen months from the next presidential election, I have not decided on a candidate, or a party for that matter, for whom I will vote. Whenever I do come to such a decision I will not make a public endorsement of that candidate, because I believe such an endorsement would be a gross misuse of my position as a pastor. Y'all probably will be able to figure out who I'm voting for at some point, but I'm not arrogant enough to think that my vote is the vote for everyone who calls themselves a Christian.
I believe that our relationship with God is personal, but not private, and that God's opinions on political issues have a lot more to do with making sure that each of God's image bearers and all of God's creation is treated justly, rather than God taking sides with one candidate over another.
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