Faith in that Barack Obama brand<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's good news for President Barack Obama: The slice of Americans who believe he is a Muslim is down to 11 percent, according to a new Gallup Poll. That\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/07\/faith-in-that-barack-obama-brand\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Faith in that Barack Obama brand\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here's good news for President Barack Obama: The slice of Americans who believe he is a Muslim is down to 11 percent, according to a new Gallup Poll. 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{"id":2585,"date":"2012-07-02T09:45:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T13:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=2585"},"modified":"2012-07-02T09:45:16","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T13:45:16","slug":"faith-in-that-barack-obama-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2012\/07\/faith-in-that-barack-obama-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith in that Barack Obama brand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here\u2019s good news for President Barack Obama: The slice of Americans who believe he is a Muslim is down to 11 percent, according to a new Gallup Poll.<\/a><\/p>\n

That number was up to 18 percent two years ago, in a Pew Research Center survey<\/a>, after hitting 11 percent in 2009.<\/p>\n

This time around, 52 percent of Democrats knew the president is a Protestant Christian, as opposed to 24 percent of Republicans. Only 3 percent of Democrats said Obama is a Muslim, while 18 percent of Republicans thought so. The number of Gallup respondents who answered \u201cnone\/no religion\u201d was fairly even \u2014 10 percent of independents, 7 percent of Republicans and 6 percent of Democrats.<\/p>\n

In many ways, the most remarkable number in these polls is that \u2014 after years of public professions by Obama \u2014 nearly 137 million Americans answer \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d when asked to name his faith. That\u2019s 44 percent of those polled in this recent Gallup effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear most Democrats recognize that he is a liberal Christian or they just don\u2019t care,\u201d said Mark Edward Taylor, author of \u201c Branding Obama: The Rise of an American Idol<\/a>.\u201d Meanwhile, on the other side, Republicans are \u201cmuch more likely to say that they are confused about his faith or that they doubt he is really a Christian.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat could be what some people really mean when they say they don\u2019t know Obama\u2019s religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there are liberals who think Obama is lying when he says he is a believer. HBO comedian Bill Maher spoke for this flock when he said: \u201cIf you woke him up in the middle of the night, or if you gave him sodium pentothal, I think (Obama would say) he\u2019s a centrist the way he is a Christian \u2014 not really.\u201d<\/p>\n

From this perspective, it\u2019s crucial that the president\u2019s father was a skeptical Muslim and that Obama has, at various times, described his mother as \u201can agnostic\u201d and \u201ca lonely witness for secular humanism,\u201d as well as \u201ca Christian from Kansas,\u201d noted Taylor. Young Obama grew up with Joseph Campbell\u2019s \u201cThe Power of Myth,\u201d as well as the Bible and the Koran.<\/p>\n

Still, there\u2019s plenty of evidence the rising politico paid attention during his years at Trinity United Church of Christ. <\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for sure: Obama didn\u2019t learn his call-and-response pulpit skills at Harvard Law School. He plugged into a liberal African-American congregation in order to build his South Chicago credibility, while hitting the golf links to learn how to reach into executive suites.<\/p>\n

By the time he went national, these lessons had been fused into a powerful advertising formula driven by the words \u201cchange,\u201d \u201chope\u201d and \u201cbelieve.\u201d In his book, Taylor says the key is that the \u201cbelieve\u201d component centered on Obama\u2019s image, talent and personal story \u2014 not a creed. The candidate offered \u201chimself to America,\u201d rather than political or religious specifics.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt no time did Obama declare, \u2018I am the Messiah.\u2019 Every time he stepped into the spotlight, though, he talked and acted like one,\u201d argued Taylor. \u201cObama created a messianic personality by being messianic. \u2026 He preached justice, righteousness and compassion. He proclaimed the end of war and peace among nations. He prophesied the healing of the planet. Obama never told the American people that he was their Savior. He showed them his plan for redemption.\u201d<\/p>\n

This take on faith rings true for millions of Americans. Yet millions of other Americans balk at Obama\u2019s privatized definition of \u201csin\u201d as \u201cbeing out of alignment with my values.\u201d In that same 2004 interview with journalist Cathleen Falsani<\/a>, Obama said he was unsure about heaven and hell, but that \u201cwhether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor is convinced this division \u2014 between two very different views of faith \u2014 is what keeps showing up in poll results about Obama and religion.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I know is that Obama recently played his 100th round of golf on a Sunday morning. I don\u2019t know if he went to church that Sunday morning or not,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we look at these poll numbers, perhaps what we are really seeing is the result of what these Americans think about religious faith. What they say about Obama may tell us as much or more about them as it does about Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"