President Barack Obama was sharing a pulpit one day with a conservative Christian leader when a revealing exchange took place. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Christian who has taken public stands against abortion and same-sex marriage, had joined Obama for an AIDS summit. They were speaking before a conservative megachurch filled with white evangelicals. When Brownback rose to speak, he joked that he had joined Obama earlier at an NAACP meeting where Obama was treated like Elvis and he was virtually ignored. Turning to Obama, a smiling Brownback said, \u201cWelcome to my house!\u201d The audience exploded with laughter and applause. Obama rose, walked before the congregation and then declared: \u201cThere is one thing I have to say, Sam. This is my house, too. This is God\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historians may remember Obama as the nation\u2019s first black president, but he\u2019s also a religious pioneer. He\u2019s not only changed people\u2019s perception of who can be president, some scholars and pastors say, but he\u2019s also expanding the definition of who can be a Christian by challenging the religious right\u2019s domination of the national stage. When Obama invoked Jesus to support same-sex marriage, framed health care as a moral imperative to care for \u201cthe least of these,\u2019\u2019 and once urged people to read their Bible but just not literally, he was invoking another Christian tradition that once dominated American public life so much that it gave the nation its first megachurches, historians say. \u201cBarack Obama has referred to his faith more times than most presidents ever have, but for many it\u2019s the wrong kind of faith,\u201d says Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners, an evangelical activist group based in Washington that focuses on poverty and social justice issues. \u201cIt is not the faith of the religious right. It\u2019s about things that they don\u2019t talk about. It\u2019s about how the Bible is full of God\u2019s clear instruction to care for the poor.\u201d President Barack Obama was sharing a pulpit one day with a conservative Christian leader when a revealing exchange took place. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Christian who has taken public stands against abortion and same-sex marriage, had joined Obama for an AIDS summit. They were speaking before a conservative megachurch filled with white evangelicals. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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