The following snip from a Pew article about Obama and United Methodists has me shaking my head:
About 200 miles south, at Faith Community Church of West Chester, the Rev. Norm Coleman said he likewise plans to vote for the Arizona senator. "I don’t know about Obama’s Christianity, that’s what brings me into question about him."
Religion News (RSS): Obama seeks ‘sleeper vote’ of Midwest Methodists
And he gets information on McCain’s Christianity exactly where? McCain refuses to talk about Christianity, only a vague generic “faith†which he invariably ends up defining as “faith in Americaâ€. Now there’s a strong theological understanding there. And McCain also doesn’t even seem to attend the church where he is ostensibly a member. So again, exactly where do people get the idea that McCain is “more Christian†than one who apparently has no problem talking about church, faith in Jesus Christ, and the rest? From the right wing media, who is just as clueless about faith except in how to manipulate it. And this audience sucks it all in and accepts it.
Exactly. Or it morphs into “faith in America”, which seems to be the only “faith” he can articulate.
It’s not even that I consider Obama to be articuylating a faith that I can relate to, it’s just that the Right wants to call what he articulates into quesiton by invoking “muslim” any chance they get, and ignore how he is the one of the two candiadtes who actually says “Jesus Christ as my Saviour”, which in the typical pop faith culture is all that one has to say in order to be saved, and yet that is dismissed and McCain is touted as the one they most identify with. Amazing. (Not really, though, since the “God has to be Republican” tendency remains the covert message alongside the overt message that God is neither.)
And when McCain does talk about a specific ‘faith’, it is always somebody else’s faith and not his own.