Why did Obama Stay?

A quick response to my colleague concerning Obama's reticence to leave his church. I mentioned Hagee and Wright in the last post to prove a larger point, but I don't intend to conflate the two. Obama had his conversion experience at Wright's church, so that's much more significant a relationship that McCain's is with Hagee. Obama's been going to Trinity for his entire life in Chicago. My only point was organized religion has a very strong tendency toward hypocrisy, and I'm very wary of that fact. So, I digress. I'm much more interested in talking about Obama's foreign policy speech today (and McCain's bungling of Iraq 101...). We'll save that for the next post. Back to the matter at hand...


I believe he stayed for two reasons, both equally strong, one pragmatic (although you might find it opportunistic), and the other completely honest and whole-hearted. While I think this is a mark on Obama's record, I assert the basic calculus on Obama has not changed. He is the same man I expected him to be, and the same candidate that I believe is best suited to lead this country.

First, Obama is a religious man, a Christian who had a religious rebirth at Holy Trinity. As many of you know, this can be a powerful force. I don't see a reason to doubt this occurred, and he's spoken and written about this transformative experience. This bound him in some ways to Rev. Wight, for better or worse. I think he should have dropped him like a bad habit years ago because I find him repulsively unpatriotic. But, I also believe in Obama's honest religiosity, just as I believe in President Bush's. If you confirm you are born-again, that you have had a spiritual experience, this can be enough to keep you coming to a Church whose pastor you don't happen to agree with, if only because you see good things happening ("God's work"). It's not easy to drop someone to whom you owe your spiritual life. Conversely, it's very easy, in the abstract, to call for Obama to drop this moron and to ignore the truth that the Church may have given something to Obama beyond the mere sermons.

Even providing the above, I can agree that it simply doesn't excuse (in the political world) Obama's continued attendance. The second reason I believe Obama stuck around was simply because he was a Chicago politician from "the neighborhood". The Church is the most powerful outlet for community involvement. Call me cynical, and call Obama the same, but do realize the relationship with and reputation in his community Obama earned by attending and interacting with his neighbors and friends. Obama is, above all, a morally courageous politician (and more so than Senator Clinton, or Gov. Romney, for example, by an immeasurable amount), but he is not perfect. I do not pretend that he is, although many do. It would have been an enormous and, probably, politically deadly choice to walk away from church years ago. He would not be where he is today without the community's support in his earliest days in Chicago as a local organizer. As they came to owe him, he came to owe them. No man is an island, they say.

If this is the worst of his political expediency, then so be it. There are few reasons to believe that he makes a habit of such acts. On countless other measures, he has been apt to say and do the impolitic. By nature, he is an unlikely candidate for office, with a foreign-sounding name and an unusual journey. If anyone would need to use expediency often to cover his glaring "flaws", conventional wisdom would say it would be a guy named Barack Hussien Obama. Yet, he has most often refused to take that route. I needn't recount the numerous examples of this but only to say this:

That if I were to bet on the sanctity and sincerity of just one candidate's character, intelligence, judgment and demeanor, it would be Barack Obama's. In all that has been written, by Senator Obama himself and by others, in all that I have observed and heard, I cannot conclude otherwise. My trust, however, is not important, and I know it will convince very few. I only hope that in this coming election, after all (and I mean all) is said and done, the American people will find what I have found and elect Senator Obama to be our next President. Stay tuned.