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Showing posts from January, 2009

The Church in Politics

Going back some years, before the announcement of his candidacy for the presidency and long before his association with Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago became a political issue, some attention had been given to then-Senator Obama’s “religion.” A bit of a public dustup with another public figure over the matter of faith brought Mr. Obama to the Call to Renewal conference where on June 28, 2006, he gave a speech on religion and politics . While some have clearly questioned his claim to be a Christian, this was perhaps rooted more in antipathy to African Americans in general or African American churches and religious experiences in particular–theirs is not “real” Christianity (an argument that goes back to the eighteenth century and has been most recently argued in Joseph Washington’s book, Black Religion: The Negro and Christianity in the United States (Beacon Press, 1964), a view thoroughly analyzed and forcefully rejected by a good many European- and African-American scho