I just came across this (
link) ... an interview the religion reporter for the
Chicago Sun-Times did with Obama in 2004, when he was running for U.S Senator. The entire interview is extremely lengthy, so I'm just posting a few portions here.
Quote:
GG:
What do you believe?
OBAMA:
I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. I draw from the Christian faith. On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences. I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10. My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim. And I’d say, probably, intellectually I’ve drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith.
So, I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that there is a higher power, that we are connected as a people. There are values that transcend race or culture that move us forward, and there’s an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.
And so, part of my project in life was to spend the first 40 years of my life figuring out what I did believe – I’m 42 now. And it’s not that I had it all completely worked out, but I’m spending a lot of time now trying to apply what I believe and trying to live up to those values.
GG:
Have you always been a Christian?
OBAMA:
I was raised more by my mother, and my mother was Christian.
GG:
Any particular flavor?
OBAMA:
No. My grandparents were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. And by the time I was born, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church. My mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We’d go to church for Easter. She wasn’t a church lady.
As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn’t a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you’d hear the prayer call.
I don’t think as a child I had a structured religious education. But my mother was a deeply spiritual person. She would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world’s religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act not just for yourself, but also for the greater good. And, so that, I think, was what I carried with me through college.
[...]
I’m not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I’ve got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.
I’m a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at its best comes with a big dose of doubt. I’m suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding.
I think that – particularly as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart – there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.
[...]
OBAMA:
Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I’m a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.
I’m very suspicious of religious certainty expressing itself in politics. Now, that’s different from a belief that values have to inform our public policy. I think it’s perfectly consistent to say that I want my government to be operating for all faiths and all peoples, including atheists and agnostics, while also insisting that there are values that inform my politics that are appropriate to talk about.
[...]
OBAMA:
Where do you move forward with that? This is something that I’m sure I’d have serious debates with my fellow Christians about. I think that the difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people who haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, that they’re going to hell.
GG
You don’t believe that?
OBAMA:
I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.
[...]
GG:
Do you believe in heaven?
OBAMA:
Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings?
GG:
A place spiritually you go to after you die?
OBAMA:
What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, I will be rewarded. I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.
When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see in them that I am transferring values that I got from my mother, and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.
GG:
Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA:
Yes.
GG:
What is sin?
OBAMA:
Being out of alignment with my values.
GG:
What happens if you have sin in your life?
OBAMA:
I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. If I’m true to myself and my faith, that is its own reward. When I’m not true to it, that’s its own punishment.
[...]
GG:
What are you doing when you feel the most centered, the most aligned spiritually?
OBAMA:
I think I already described it. It’s when I’m being true to myself. And that can happen in me making a speech or it can happen in me playing with my kids, or it can happen in a small interaction with a security guard in a building when I’m recognizing them and exchanging a good word.
[...]
GG:
… An example of a role model, who combined everything you said you want to do in your life, and your faith?
OBAMA:
I think Gandhi is a great example of a profoundly spiritual man who acted and risked everything on behalf of those values but never slipped into intolerance or dogma. He seemed to always maintain an air of doubt about him. I also think of Dr. King, and Lincoln. Those three are good examples for me of people who applied their faith to a larger canvas without allowing that faith to metasticize into something that is hurtful.
[...]
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He mentioned Gandhi several times during the interview. Gandhi, along with people such as the Dalai Lama, are usually referred to as "heathen" by Christian fundamentalists, which says a lot about the "Christians" and nothing about the people they're talking about. Which is what projection is about, after all.
I read some of the comments posted about the interview, most of which were by fundamentalists citing the Bible and indicating their fear and disapproval of what Obama said. It's funny ... I can read what he said, and see the depth of what he calls his spiritual "faith". The fundies can read the same thing and see no "faith" at all.
To me, someone who thinks and contemplates about things and consistently tries to make it a part of their life is operating at a much deeper level than someone who takes at face value "commandments" that are spoon-fed to them. As far as I can see, in their view "faith" means trying to conquer their doubts about what they've been told and forcing themselves to comply regardless of their doubts.
Hmmm. To use the concept we've mentioned in another thread here (
link), I would place greater value on "internal locus-of-control" in spirituality than "external locus". As I commented in that thread, external locus-of-control is essentially a way of avoiding responsibility. How can that be "deeper" in any way? Where's the integrity? To me, it's a much more superficial way of approaching life, at least if it's not balanced.
24-11-2008
Churches compete for Obamas 
It's certainly important ... not just any old TP will do for me, let me tell you. But it's not something the American public needs to be kept apprised of. Oh geez, I'm seeing the TV commercials now: 
)
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