Obama
Trick or Treat
By cmcmorri — October 29, 2008
It’s been a while since all the Jeremiah Wright commotion. This is a last minute release by The National Republican Trust PAC. Apparently it will cost the PAC somewhere between 1-3 million dollars to air it. Brody suggests the moment’s too far gone now for the video to have much impact and that if McCain […]
PA too
By Mark Silk — October 7, 2008
Obama’s all but erased the God Gap in Pennsylvania too. But remember, this is only with respect to regular worship attenders. For the less than regular–call it the Godless Gap–the Democratic (i.e. Obama) margin is huge: nearly 30 points. So if by religion gap (a term I prefer, despite the lack of poetry) we mean […]
Smoked
By Mark Silk — September 24, 2008
The news is beginning to sink in that Obama has not managed to change the voting preferences of the most religious white voters, evangelicals especially.To explain why Obama’s “much vaunted religious outreach campaign…isn’t working,” pastordan has recourse to the idea that it’s just very difficult to move socially conservative evangelicals. I agree with that, but […]
Rabbis for Obama
By Mark Silk — September 22, 2008
As of today, some 400 rabbis have signed on with a new organization called Rabbis for Obama. Never before in American history have rabbis gotten together in this way to endorse a presidential candidate, according to Brandeis’s Jonathan Sarma, and he should know. JTA’s got the story. What seems to have driven the rabbis to […]
Antichrist
By Mark Silk — September 21, 2008
I’ve been thinking some more about the following passage from Nicholas Kristof’s column this morning: John Green, of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, says that about 10 percent of Americans believe we may be in the Book of Revelation’s “end times” and are on the lookout for the Antichrist. A constant barrage […]
Race and Religion
By Mark Silk — September 21, 2008
Nicholas Kristof argues in a sharp column in today’s NYT that the underground campaign to make Barack Obama into a Muslim serves as a workaround: What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin […]
Charisma and its discontents
By Mark Silk — September 18, 2008
At Temple Beth El last night I was struck again by the bitterness and vituperation that Obama provokes in some people. Why should a candidate whose campaign has been built on a rhetoric of bringing people together, who engages in a minimum of personal attack, inspire such antipathy? Back during the primary campaign, the antipathy […]
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
By Mark Silk — September 7, 2008
Obama admits to Stephanapoulos that his “above my pay grade” response to Rick Warren’s abortion question was “too flip”: “What I intended to say is that, as a Christian, I have a lot of humility about understanding when does the soul enter into … It’s a pretty tough question. And so, all I meant to […]
Rav Capers
By Mark Silk — September 2, 2008
It turns out that America’s leading African-American rabbi, Capers Funnye of Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation on Chicago’s South Side, is a first cousin once removed of Michelle Obama. On the case is the Forward, which describes him as “well-known in Jewish circles for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and the […]
Oltman Replies
By Mark Silk — September 1, 2008
Last week, I took Adele Oltman to task for her piece in the Nation arguing that Obama had more in common with Daddy King than his son, MLK, Jr. Oltman has now posted a long response that I find much less problematic, and which is worth a look. Her appreciation of King, Sr.’s contribution is […]
Mile High Civil Religion
By Mark Silk — August 29, 2008
For connoisseurs of religion in American public life, last night’s stadium extravaganza offered a couple of tasty morsels. Let me begin with Rev. Joel Hunter’s benediction, which ended with the novelty of asking all attendees to pray in the name of whatever they pray in the name of. Or as he put it: Now I […]
Press Notes
By Mark Silk — August 28, 2008
Over at the Revealer, Jeff Sharlet is puffing Adele Oltman’s Nation piece on Obama and the Martin Luther Kings, Sr. and Jr. Read it if you must, but I wouldn’t take seriously its claim that Barack Obama is more like Daddy than Dr. King. The suggestion that Obama is advocating some kind of throwback to […]
Sermon
By Mark Silk — August 15, 2008
Hat tip to Premil Cindy for calling my attention to this video, which has so far been viewed over half a million times. It was created by Ph For America, an outfit that says it’s “hoping to become the “Swiftboat” 527 organization of 2008.” After clipping the sentences on the Bible from Obama’s 2006 Call […]
Life Force
By Mark Silk — August 13, 2008
Steve Waldman thinks Obama messed up by not making sure that his pro-life religious supporters got more out of the platform committee abortion plank. I’m not so sure. Like it or not, Obama is firmly pro-choice. His opponents are pulling out all the stops to demonstrate that he is not just your run-of-the-mill pro-choice politician, […]
Georgia the Christian
By Mark Silk — August 12, 2008
As you may not have noticed, in making his pitch today that “we are all Georgians,” John McCain called the invaded Caucasian state “one of the first nations on earth to convert to Christianity…it’s been part of the grand sweep that compromises Western civilization.” Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at Christianity. But […]
