The Illusive Obama

Where is Moses when you need him?  Ah!  Circling the earth one more time, waiting for a voice from the burning bush but too far away to hear it.

Sen. Obama, the last, best hope of
progressive, faithful politicos (forever in process of being
defined), has been launched into the orbit of Presidential politics.

If you look toward the East on a
clear night, you can find him traveling in a zig zag pattern, his
light shining brightly, direction uncertain; destiny unknown. Orbit
may be the closest to Barack that the grassroots will ever come. He's
here; he's there; he's everywhere; he's nowhere.

If
you speak with any of his staff, he is "awfully busy," leading
one to speculate as to what will happen when he really gets
busy and how effective he is at delegating authority, a rather
critical asset in the presidential lottery.

I have one friend who is Chief of
Staff of a state's Speaker of the House and has been trying to make
viable contact with someone in charge for a year now for the purpose
of engaging the faith-in-public-life issue.

If the Senator can ignore a person
of that caliber, how does he plan to resonate with the person on the
street? The American public is becoming very good at dodging sound
bites.

It may appear to be early, but
commitments are in the offing, the hour is getting late, and there is
a primary to win.

In the meantime, Sen. Clinton is
out of the chute organized, focused, responsive, funded and
available. In some circles, they call this "Old Boy Networking."
In others, they call it a winning strategy, depending on your hopes,
dreams and preferences.

Whatever it is, Sen. OBama is
going to find it tough sledding against the Clinton juggernaut.
"Earth to Obama: There are millions of embarrassed Evangelicals and
disenfranchised Catholics out there in the heartland who are looking
for a political home!"

My take on the Clinton machine is
that it will scoop up those embarrassed Evangelicals and
disenfranchised Catholics before you can say "Armageddon." That
is, if she doesn't get bogged down with the cynical likes of James
Carville, Harold Ickes and Terry McAuliffe, power mongers of a time
when the world was round.

Some
were hoping that this would be the election when it began to dawn on
the American public and its ecclesiastical leadership that 5^th
grade theology is OK, so long as you are in the 5^th grade.
That's a great line that I borrowed from Rev. Lawrence Keene,
Sociology Professor at Pepperdine U, commenting on the new
documentary film, For the Bible Tells Me So (Jessica
Ravitz, The Salt Lake Tribune, January
22, 2007).

We orthodox Evangelicals, some
sixty-million strong (assuming that only half of Evangelicals polled
are willing to admit to it), exiles from McChurch and caught in the
demilitarized zone of the rising American theocracy, are not exactly
looking for a Messiah, but we were anticipating a more visionary
scenario than Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton. Follow the bouncing ball!

And for what it's worth, Pastor
Rick Warren doesn't cut it with the the Church in Exile — too much
sizzle and not enough steak. Heck of a personality, though. And
heck of a success story, praise God or whomever.

Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton:
twenty-six years in the desert – fourteen more to the Promised
Land? Where is Moses when you need him? Ah! Circling the earth one
more time, waiting for a voice from the burning bush but too far away
to hear it.