Obama And Small-Town America (2)

Again, the extraordinarily revealing portion of Senator Obama's response to a question apparently posed to him about, in the words of blogger Mayhill Flower, "low levels of national pride" at a fund-raiser on 4/6/08:


So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Clinging to religion? Could this be the same senator from Illinois who Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet on January 19, 2007 spoke of having interviewed in the spring of 2004?

Obama said he was a Christian, that he has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that he reads the Bible regularly and prays constantly. He described his conversion experience in his mid-20s....

Could this be the same senator from Illinois described in the following way on 7/16/07 by Christian Science Monitor staff writer Ariel Sabar?

More than the other Democratic candidates for president, Obama has made faith a centerpiece of his campaign.

He suffuses his speeches with biblical allusions – "I am my brother's keeper" is a favorite phrase. And he has cast his generation of black leaders as modern-day Joshuas, after Moses' successor, who led the Israelites to the Promised Land.

Many of Obama's political views are "an outgrowth of his reading of some of the seminal parts of the Bible about doing unto the 'least of these' just as we would have done unto Christ," says Joshua DuBois, the campaign's director of religious affairs, paraphrasing verses in the book of Matthew.

Is this the same senator from Illinois quoted in an Associated Press article from 12/17/07?

(Obama stated) "I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in".... Obama regularly attends church while on the campaign trail, but seldom with reporters watching. He is known to invoke religious references in his speeches and has said he has a "personal relationship" with Jesus Christ.
Obama's campaign has made a point of reaching out to religious voters. It has held 16 meetings in Iowa as part of a faith outreach program it is undertaking in all primary states."

And if it is, could this be the same candidate who believes people "cling" to religion "when they get bitter.... as a way to explain their frustrations?" This last candidate needs to resist the temptation to express his contempt for people who hold values similar to the ones he periodically claims to hold.