President Obama and Ramadan

A friend sent me a youtube video about President Obama speaking to a room full of Muslims and a few others at the White House at the beginning of the Muslim season of Ramadan. Here's my response to the video:

Politically, I think that presidents often feel they have to honor people of different faiths, no matter how different their views may be. To some extent that's wise. Bush and Carter officially recognized Ramadan during their time in the White House. Politicians can develop some pretty good skills for bridging differences. Not all of which lead to good policy, of course! I'm not sure where Obama's policy toward U.S. Muslims will lead, but I predict that we will be on friendlier terms with reasonable Muslims because of his polite, friendly approach. I don't want a "bull in a china shop" president.

Historically, we are a "Christian nation," i.e., Christian influences clearly shaped our history more than any other religion. That is changing, however, as our population becomes more and more diverse. Whether we should have had such generous immigration laws (which are only partly to blame for the increased diversity) is worth debating. As you know, it was once quite controversial to allow a lot of Irish Catholic immigrants into the U.S. We lost our "protestant purity" a long time ago. (I say that with tongue firmly in cheek.)

Constitutionally, I believe that we are not formally a Christian nation. Gary North, a very conservative Christian scholar, has argued persuasively that the U.S. Constitution was quite different from the original constitutions of the various colonies/states. Most, if not all, of the latter were explicitly Christian; but the U.S. Constitution broke with that tradition and was consciously designed to be non-committal in terms of religion.

I don't think David Barton and some other "Christian Founders" lecturers clearly explain (or even necessarily understand) that distinction. They can argue about our Christian historical roots, but then they seem to skip over what Gary North has pointed out about the primary founding document of our country. The Constitution does not constitute us as a Christian nation in any formal sense.

Theologically: I accept the sincerity of President Obama's confession of faith that Jesus is the Son of God who died to atone for his sins. But, it seems that he also believes that God will show grace to others who do not hold our understanding of Jesus if they seek God according to the light they have.

As you may know, there are a number of Christians who have argued for some "larger hope" kind of theology which would see John 14:6 (Jesus saying, "I am the way") and Acts 4:12 (there's no other name besides Jesus through which we must be saved) as speaking of the "ontological necessity" of Jesus' saving mediatorship (i.e., that no one, even infants, can be saved apart from what Jesus has done on the Cross as an objective reality to reconcile us to God) rather than seeing those verses as speaking of an epistemological necessity (i.e., that one must know and believe all of what the Bible reveals about Jesus' saving work) to be saved.

Obama seems to side with the larger hope view. Whether he's right or not, I certainly don't believe that he is a Muslim or that he is plotting to turn our country over to Muslims. Some people see a video like the one we're talking about and they suspect the worst. I don't.

God bless,
Patrick