Overheard 2

Susan Thistlethwaite, a fellow UCC member with President Obama, weighs in on Obama’s faith and sees him, as does David Brooks, as a Niebuhrian realist and not a liberation theologian.

President Obama is a Christian, and a fairly typical United Church of Christ sort of Christian at that. On June 23, 2007, then candidate Obama spoke to the United Church of Christ General Synod in Hartford, CT. I was there at that church event, and his speech on a “Politics of Conscience” has resonated with me ever since. Obama’s is uniquely a UCC kind of faith, where we say “to believe is care, to care is to do.” It’s also a somewhat intellectual faith, also typical of the UCC. Obama admits that he didn’t “fall out” (i.e. topple over because one is moved by the Holy Spirit) when he walked down the church aisle to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. “I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works. But my journey is part of a larger journey – one shared by all who’ve ever sought to apply the values of their faith to our society.”

Faith and works together. This is Obama’s Christian faith. President Obama’s beliefs seem in the mainstream for a United Church of Christ member, though more in the Reformed tradition of the UCC than the Congregational. That’s why he likes Reinhold Niebuhr so much….

In his own words, from an interview with David Brooks,

What does Obama take away from Niebhur’s writing? “‘I take away,’ Obama answered in a rush of words, ‘the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can elimiate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away…the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.”