American Thinker | Lee Cary | Jun 26, 2008
In his confrontation with James Dobson, Senator Obama faces a degree of absolutism that pales in belligerent intensity compared to what he could, as President, face from America’s most hostile adversaries. His response to Dobson is a clue to how he might deal with Ahmadinejad, Chavez, et al.
It’s no secret that the Obama Campaign is executing a plan to woo evangelical voters coordinated by Joshua DuBois, the National Director of Religious Affairs. DuBois, a member of a United Pentecostal Council Assemblies of God church in Cambridge, Mass., was a graduate student at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School when he was “enthralled” by Obama’s reference to faith issues in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech. He volunteered to help Obama get elected president.
Dobson’s recent comments haven’t helped that effort. Dobson said,
“I think he’s [Obama] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.”
The candidate who wants to bring religious peoples together by understanding each other’s positions responded that Dobson was “making stuff up,” and that,
“Any notion that I was distorting the Bible in that speech [his 2006 Call To Renewal Keynote], I think anyone would be hard pressed to make that argument.”
James Dobson is a son, grandson, and great-grandson of Nazarene evangelists and remains a member of the largest denomination to evolve from the 19th Century Holiness Movement.
Barack Obama was a long-time member of a liberal, mainline protestant denomination. His chosen congregational affiliation was, for two decades, as a member of a local church unreservedly based on black liberation theology.
These two Christian communities will naturally hold different exegetical views on some Biblical concepts, akin to the relationship between medical and chiropractic doctors. And, they’ll place varying emphases on specific Biblical passages. It harks back to why all churches don’t have “Roman Catholic” on their marquees.
So Dobson said Obama is distorting the Bible, and Obama said Dobson is “making stuff up.” Sounds like a case of He said, He said.
So what does this have to do with how a President Obama would deal with belligerent, international dogmatists, be they religious, political, or some combination thereof? Stand-by.
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