Obama, Gay Marriage, and the UCC

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly reminds us that, in evolving toward support of gay marriage, Barack Obama has been evolving toward the perspective endorsed by his denomination and mine, the United Church of Christ:

When the Obamas were last regular church members, it was, famously, a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Like a lot of First Families, they have not joined a specific church in Washington, so I assume the UCC remains their spiritual “home.” As part of a decentralized denomination (hence the traditional name for their largest constituent element, the “Congregationalists”), many UCC churches have been performing same-sex marriages for years. But the entire denominationembraced the practice in 2005, adopting a resolution of support:

The resolution was adopted in the face of efforts to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. It was both a theological statement and a protest against discrimination, said the Rev. John H. Thomas, the president and general minister of the denomination, which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members.

Religious conservatives may scoff at the UCC (or the Episcopalians, or other mainline denominations that are, to use the buzzword, “open and affirming” to gay people). But the UCC is the country’s oldest Christian religious community, and among other things, was spearheading the fight against slavery back when many of the religious conservatives of the early nineteenth century were largely defending it as a divinely and scripturally ordained institution.

One of many reasons I'm glad to be part of the UCC is its stance on marriage equality. It's good to see Barack Obama finally coming around to see the value of that stance as well. Here's hoping that the fact that his position is rooted in his Christian faith gets a lot more coverage. It's certainly worthy of it.

Comments

[Luther Gaylord]

"Here's hoping that the fact that his position is rooted in his Christian faith gets a lot more coverage."

Sigh.

(1) No one but Obama really knows how religious (or not) he is. This is politics, after all; people wave their "I'm a Christian!" flags whenever it's expedient.

So we don't really know that it's a FACT, now do we?

(2) Let's assume for a moment that Obama were an atheist. (He would never be POTUS if that were the case, of course, but...)

If Obama's position on marriage equality were rooted in his atheism -- no invented "god" telling us what we must do and think, no biblical condemnation of homosexuals, etc. -- would you also want to see coverage of that in the media? Probably not, because it would no longer count as a "win" for your side. Right?

(3) Obama has been a huge disappointment to those of us "on the left" since he got elected. I'm glad to see him finally acting a little more like the guy he campaigned as in 2007-2008 (quelle surprise -- it's election season again). But I'm irritated to see you trying to claim UCC credit for this.

What about all the evil shit the Obama administration has done? Will you also place blame for that on Obama's Christian faith? I rather doubt it.

[Scott Paeth]

Hey Luther.

To reply:

1) It's true no one can no what's in another's heart or mind fully, which is why my tendency is to take them at their word when they say they believe a particular thing. Besides which, you miss the larger context of the point -- namely, it serves as another data point in the refutation of the pernicious "Obama is a secret Muslim atheist socialist Nazi" meme that is so popular on the right. Which is one reason why I hoped it would be more widely publicized.

2) If Obama were an atheist, I would indeed want it more widely publicized that his position were rooted in that perspective. I've written a lot about the topic of atheism on this blog Luther, so you should know by now that I have a healthy respect for an intellectually rigorous atheism, and don't have a lot of use for the argument that atheists aren't capable of being moral as religious folk are.

You seem to be thinking I'm arguing for the exclusive morality of a Christian outlook. I'm not. I'm arguing for a number of possible paths to the same conclusion, which is the fully inclusion of gay and lesbian folks within society.

And that's part of the core argument I'm making. Every time a Christian comes out for gay and lesbian equality, it chips away at the pretense that Christians must be opposed to gay and lesbian equality, so the more folks, like Obama, who identify their advocacy of gay rights with their religious faith, the more the arguments against homosexuality on the basis of religious faith are seen to fail. It's a long process of erosion, but every drop of water helps.

3) There are a lot of things that I wish Obama had done differently, and I too wish he had tacked more to the left on any number of issues. But a) he was never really all that liberal, and a lot of liberals projected a more lefty persona on him than was proper; and truth be told, he was pretty up front about his own moderation. And b) He has been hobbled to no small degree by the sclerotic condition of congress. The health care bill would have been much more progressive in numerous ways if he only had to get 50 rather than 60 votes in the Senate. And now with a Republican House, there's not a lot he can do productively.

All that said, I think if you look at the list of things that the Obama administration accomplished in its first two years, there's not a lot there for progressives to complain about. He's moved the ball down the court in significant ways, even if he hasn't yet scored every point we'd like.

As for the "evil shit" that he's done, well there have been a number of things, particularly on the foreign policy front, that I've objected to. Obama's advisors insist that their within the bounds of legality, but even if their not, things like drone strikes on villages certainly seem to me to violate the principle of noncombatant immunity in warfare. With Bush, I suspect I WOULD have blamed similar things on his Christian faith, because for him his faith gave in a sense of unshakable certainty in his own righteousness, which led us to disaster after disaster. But I see it as different with Obama. His faith does not, from everything of his that I've read and seen on the subject, give him a sense of self-righteous certainty, but rather a sense of humility about our ability to do anything perfectly. So we do the best we can with the resources we have. This is what's at the heart of the Niebuhrian realism that I've written about in the past. I can send you some of what I've written on the topic if you're interested, including my soon to be published article on Niebuhr and the financial crisis.