Finding His Faith
So much has been made about Barack Obama's religion. But what does he believe, and how did he arrive at those beliefs?
Obama on Faith
In 1981 Barack Obama was 20 years old, a Columbia University student in search of the meaning of life. He was torn a million different ways: between youth and maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. He enrolled at Columbia in part to get far away from his past; he'd gone to high school in Hawaii and had just spent two years "enjoying myself," as he puts it, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. In New York City, "I lived an ascetic existence," Obama told NEWSWEEK in an interview on his campaign plane last week. "I did a lot of spiritual exploration. I withdrew from the world in a fairly deliberate way." He fasted. Often, he'd go days without speaking to another person.
For company, he had books. There was Saint Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop who wrote the West's first spiritual memoir and built the theological foundations of the Christian Church. There was Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher and father of existentialism. There was Graham Greene, the Roman Catholic Englishman whose short novels are full of compromise, ambivalence and pain. Obama meditated on these men and argued with them in his mind.
When he felt restless on a Sunday morning, he would wander into an African-American congregation such as Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "I'd just sit in the back and I'd listen to the choir and I'd listen to the sermon," he says, smiling a little as he remembers those early days in the wilderness. "There were times that I would just start tearing up listening to the choir and share that sense of release."
Obama has spoken often and eloquently about the importance of religion in public life. But like many political leaders wary of offending potential backers, he has been less revealing about what he believes—about God, about prayer, about the connection between salvation and personal responsibility. In some respects, his reticence is understandable. Obama's religious biography is unconventional and politically problematic. Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But rumors about Obama's religion persist. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 12 percent of voters incorrectly believe he's Muslim; more than a quarter believe he was raised in a Muslim home.
His baptism presents its own problems. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama's baptism was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV for weeks last spring—and will doubtless be seen again this fall. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, almost half of the respondents say Obama shares at least some of Wright's views; nearly a third say Wright might prevent them from voting for the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The story of Obama's religious journey is a uniquely American tale. It's one of a seeker, an intellectually curious young man trying to cobble together a religious identity out of myriad influences. Always drawn to life's Big Questions, Obama embarked on a spiritual quest in which he tried to reconcile his rational side with his yearning for transcendence. He found Christ—but that hasn't stopped him from asking questions. "I'm on my own faith journey and I'm searching," he says. "I leave open the possibility that I'm entirely wrong."
The story of Obama's faith begins with his mother, Ann. Raised in the Midwest by two lapsed Christians, she lived and traveled throughout the world appreciating all religions but confessing to none. One of Ann's favorite spiritual texts was "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth," a set of PBS interviews with Bill Moyers that traces the common themes of religion and mythology, Obama's half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, tells NEWSWEEK. When the family lived in Indonesia, Ann, on occasion, would take the children to Catholic mass; after returning to Hawaii, they would celebrate Easter and Christmas at United Church of Christ congregations. Ann later went back to Indonesia with Maya, and when Obama visited, they would take him to Borobudur, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world. Later, while working in India, Ann lived for a time in a Buddhist monastery.
Visiting temples was not just tourism for Ann. "These kinds of experiences were a regular part of our childhood and our upbringing, and were important to [our mother] because they involved ritual," says Maya. "She thought that ritual was very beautiful. The idea of human beings' striving to be better, having the curiosity and questions about all these things, [was] perpetual and constant inside her."
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Member Comments
Posted By: mccainsupporter @ 08/27/2008 12:19:09 PM
Comment: ??? If you think about it John McCain plan for forty-five new nuclear power plants is reasonable, needed and attainable. Our current 108 nuclear power plants supply twenty (20) percent of our electricity requirements. This is amazing considering that it has been thirty years since there has been new construction on new nuclear power plants anywhere in the United States. Construction on new nuclear power plants has occurred throughout the world but not in the United States thanks to Democratic leadership. In France, nuclear power supplies 80 percent of their electricity needs. Because 108 nuclear power plants are generating twenty percent of our needs, an additional 45 nuclear power plants will only increase the percentage of nuclear power to roughly 28 percent of our needs well short of French eighty percent nuclear power generation of electricity. John McCain proposals are reasonable and will help lead us to energy independence. Democrats under the leadership of Barack Obama want to study the issue for another 30 years. By that time the only remaining United States builder of nuclear power plants General Electric will have gone the way of Westinghouse and sold its nuclear construction division to a foreign owned company Toshiba Corporation of Japan. Given the Democratic led hostile business environment for nuclear power in the United States, we will have no United States owned companies capable of building nuclear power plants.
The reality is that a few nuclear power plants will have a greater contribution to our energy independence than all the contributions of solar, wind, and thermal energy. Only the proposals of John McCain on nuclear power, offshore drilling, wind, and solar energy will make the idea of United States energy independence a reality.
Posted By: mccainsupporter @ 08/27/2008 12:18:06 PM
Comment: Does the Democratic leadership under Barack Obama expect current electric power plants to provide all the huge electricity requirements to recharge and power all the new hybrid and electric cars will be coming on line. There will have to be new power plants built and these must be nuclear plants. If Democrats think that wind or solar will recharge all of these new cars, they have to be joking because the wind does not blow all the time. The new sources of additional electricity to charge up all these cars will have to come from nuclear energy.
Why is there such an ingrained irrational paranoia about nuclear energy and waste disposal among some Americans especially the Democratic leadership under the direction of Barack Obama. Importantly also why is it somehow okay for hundreds of thousands of Navy sailors to have served for nearly thirty-five years aboard nuclear power American aircraft carriers and nuclear powered submarines and air force personnel to handle nuclear bombs but Democratic leadership under Barack Obama will not consider to even remotely assume any risks involved with nuclear power. Is it okay for our servicemen to be exposed to alleged risks but not the Democratic leadership who oppose nuclear power. This paranoia is particular evident with the Democrats acceptance of risks that are associated with other aspects of modern American living. Forty thousand people die every year in the United States in auto accidents but there is no outcry to ban all automobiles in the United States. Bridges have collapsed recently in Minnesota and tunnels ceilings in Boston have fallen but there is no consensus on eliminating bridges or tunnels. There have been airplane crashes that have also involved injuries on the ground but there is no outcry to ban air travel. There have been repeated rail and ship accidents but no outcry to ban railroads or ship travel. The irrational fear involving nuclear power and waste disposal has no justification. American people undergo multiple medical and dental xrays and CT scans yearly and have no fear. TSA airport screeners and medical staff work daily around xray equipment, fluoroscopes, and CT machines and do not experience adverse health consequences as a result of their work exposure. There were no documented adverse health events associated with the Three Mile Island release of minor radiation in the 1970s and no payments for health losses were ever made involving lawsuits related to that accident. The containment vessel held at Three Mile Island. In light of most Americans acceptance of risks associated with automobiles, trains, planes, and ships, the fear on the part of the Democratic leadership of nuclear power can not be viewed as rational. John McCain's proposals to build 45 new nuclear power plants along with his other energy proposals on conservation and renewable energy will help America achieve relative energy independence in the near term and long term.
Posted By: mccainsupporter @ 08/27/2008 12:17:05 PM
Comment: On the day of the announcement of his selection to be the Democratic nominee for vice-President, Joe Biden was quick to go on attack and use the Bush clone metaphor in describing John McCain. Cloning of course involves copying genes. Issues involving clones, copying and plagiarism seem to be recurrent themes in the life of Joe Biden. It has been reported that Joe Biden withdrew from his 1987 Presidential primary race against George Dukakis and Dick Gephardt due to reports of plagiarism of a speech by Neil Kinnock a former British Labor Party leader. More damaging are reports that during his first year at Syracuse University Law School, Joe Biden lifted five pages of material out of a total fifteen page legal research and writing class memo from a Fordham Law Review article. Joe Biden received a grade of F in the legal research and writing course and had to repeat it the following semester. Copying and mimicking behavior is sometimes said to be the sincerest form of flattery but plagiarism falls into a special category of a backhanded compliment because it implies a disdain for the original author and your audience. Did Joe Biden believe that none of his professors would take the time to look up his citations or have read or be familiar with the Fordham law review article on his topic product liability. Many Catholics would be offended that a fellow Irish Catholic like Joe Biden would use Fordham Law Review an academic product of his own faith to commit plagiarism.