I don’t know if you saw The New York Times this weekend ( I normally read my six year old the editorial section before she goes to bed. It puts her right to sleep.) but there was a great article about how President Obama turns to five influential religious leaders for spiritual advice. Read below and then get my take.
President Obama has been without a pastor or a home church ever since he cut his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in the heat of the presidential campaign. But he has quietly cultivated a handful of evangelical pastors for private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics.
All are men, two of them white and three black — including the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a graying lion of the civil rights movement. Two, the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T. D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, also served as occasional spiritual advisers to President George W. Bush. Another, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leans left on some issues, like military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion.
None of these pastors are affiliated with the religious right, though several are quite conservative theologically. One of them, the Rev. Joel C. Hunter, the pastor of a conservative megachurch in Florida, was branded a turncoat by some leaders of the Christian right when he began to speak out on the need to stop global warming.
But as a group they can hardly be characterized as part of the religious left either. Most, like Mr. Wallis, do not take traditionally liberal positions on abortion or homosexuality. What most say they share with the president is the conviction that faith is the foundation in the fight against economic inequality and social injustice.
“These are all centrist, social justice guys,” said the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, a politically active pastor of Azusa Community Church in Boston, who knows all of them but is not part of the president’s prayer caucus. “Obama genuinely comes out of the social justice wing of the church. That’s real. The community organizing stuff is real.”
The pastors say Mr. Obama appears to rely on his faith for intellectual and spiritual succor.
“While he may not put ‘Honk if You Love Jesus’ bumper stickers on the back of his car, he is the kind of guy who practices what he preaches,” said Mr. Caldwell, the senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. “He has a desire to keep in touch with folk outside the Beltway, and to stay in touch with God. He seems to see those as necessary conditions for maintaining his internal compass.”
Bishop Jakes said he had been tapped for several prayer phone calls — the most recent being when Mr. Obama’s grandmother died in November, two days before the election. “You take turns praying,” said Bishop Jakes, who like the other ministers did not want to divulge details of the calls. “It’s really more about contacting God than each other.”
Mr. Hunter said of the phone calls: “The times I have prayed with him, he’s always initiated it.”
The whole article is here.
The Brody File has dealt with two of these men before. Beyond being genuine in their calling, Jim Wallis and Joel Hunter are indeed serious players inside the Obama administration. Both of them may be misunderstood to a degree.
Pastor Hunter is not looked upon that fondly by some religious conservatives because of his association with Obama. In their view, it is Joel Hunter who gives Obama “cover” so the administration can say how they are bringing conservative Evangelicals into the conversation. That seems, in my view, to be an unfair slap at Hunter and the administration. Hunter hasn’t changed his beliefs so as to fit in with the Obama administration. And as for the White House, they are serious about dialogue across the ideological spectrum.
As for Jim Wallis, he gets stereotyped so often as the ‘progressive radical liberal Evangelical”. Well, actually he tells me that he’s theologically conservative even though he’d be the first to admit he’s a radical liberal when it comes to helping the poor in this country and he’s proud of it. But actually on abortion he’s very much pro-life and is one of the key figures pushing the Obama administration to make reducing abortions a priority. He’s serious about it and has written extensively about it too. Read here.
Jim Wallis and Joel Hunter may be considered “power players” because of their access to the President but they would both tell you they like being on the outside of the fence pushing for social change. They wouldn’t have it any other way.