Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Lots of news outlets, citing a Time magazine report, have reported that Obama has finally chosen a church and it's the chapel at Camp David.
Now, in an unexpected move, Obama has told White House aides that instead of joining a congregation in Washington, D.C., he will follow in George W. Bush's footsteps and make his primary place of worship Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David.
But the White House has shot down that claim:
President Obama continues to search for a church despite an article claiming he's settled on the small chapel at Camp David, a White House spokesman said Monday.Time magazine reported that the president, who since taking office has been searching for a place of worship in the Washington, D.C. area, has told aides that he will make Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David, his primary church.
Former President George W. Bush did the same, and the article said Obama was following suit mainly to avoid a public scene whenever he attends services.
But White House spokesman Bill Burton shot down the report.
"The story is inaccurate," he said. "The president and first family continue to look for a church home. They have enjoyed worshipping at Camp David and several other congregations over the months, and will choose a church at the time that is best for their family."
Why should I care? Well, this jumped out at me from the Time article:
That means Obama is still looking for someone he can pray with and turn to for spiritual guidance. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton stayed in close touch with their hometown pastors after moving to the White House. Not long into his first term, Clinton also started scheduling regular meetings with Bill Hybels, pastor of a Chicago-area evangelical megachurch called Willow Creek. Three other religious leaders -- Phil Wogaman, Tony Campolo and Gordon MacDonald -- came to the White House for monthly prayer sessions with Clinton after the Lewinsky scandal, as impeachment began to weigh on him.But Barack Obama found himself spiritually isolated upon entering the Oval Office. He famously broke ties last year with Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, and resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. So, just as he followed Bush's lead in choosing Evergreen as a church home, the President is taking a page from Clinton's playbook on this front: Obama has a small group of pastors he contacts for prayer and spiritual support (including two men who played the same role at times for Bush).
Those two, Kirbyjon Caldwell and T.D. Jakes, are both African-American ministers from Texas. Caldwell offered a prayer at Bush's first inauguration and in 2008 he officiated at Jenna Bush's wedding. By that point, he was an Obama supporter, even launching the website JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com last summer when the Focus on the Family leader accused Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview." Obama chose Jakes to preach the sermon at a private prayer service the morning of his inauguration and reached out to him to pray by phone on other occasions.
While the other three leaders Obama turns to are all members of his Faith Advisory Council, when he contacts them it is to talk not on a policy level but a personal one. Otis Moss Jr. is a retired Baptist pastor who once served with Martin Luther King Sr. at Ebeneezer Church. His son is the new pastor -- following Jeremiah Wright -- at Trinity in Chicago, but Moss is the model of a proper old-school preacher and is the father figure of Obama's group. His fellow council member, Joel Hunter, is a white evangelical and pastor of a Florida megachurch. And Vashti McKenzie is the first female elected as a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
And this thought occurred to me: Wouldn't it be refreshing if, just once, a president skipped having "spiritual advisers" giving him religious advice and praying with him and instead had really intelligent humanist leaders think with him?
Politics
Comments
"Wouldn't it be refreshing if, just once, a president skipped having "spiritual advisers" giving him religious advice and praying with him and instead had really intelligent humanist leaders think with him?"
Last I checked, we called them the "Cabinet". Although I guess YMMV w/r/t 'real intelligence'...
Posted by: mad the swine | July 2, 2009 9:38 AM
Ed,
Are you really using _Fox_ as a source of 'news'...?
Posted by: David Durant | July 2, 2009 9:46 AM
Ed, I'm pretty sure Obama can have both. In fact, he probably does.
Posted by: Brandon | July 2, 2009 10:03 AM
Sure, next you'll want him to use the Constitution instead of the Bible as a source for law.
Posted by: Rob Jase | July 2, 2009 11:07 AM
I took Ed's point as, "wouldn't it be nice if it was possible to have a president who didn't have to make his faith such a big part of his politics?"
I have no objection to Obama's personal faith, but wouldn't it be nice if it was possible for someone to get elected without having to make a show of professing their faith? I would argue straight out that neither Regan nor Clinton were really Christians, and that Bush Sr. was only nominally so. Yet they had to make the pretense. It creates bizarre political moments, then, like Howard Dean trying to demonstrate he understands Christianity, and misplacing books in the Bible. While Dean could probably never have convinced me to vote for him, it was ridiculous that he was politically damaged because he wasn't religious enough.
Posted by: James Hanley | July 2, 2009 11:44 AM
It distresses me that Obama's place of worship is apparently big enough news to warrant a piece in Time magazine.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | July 2, 2009 12:47 PM
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."
“And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.”
--Thomas Jefferson
Imagine a president saying that today.
Posted by: Eric | July 2, 2009 1:16 PM
No way in hell Thomas Jefferson would have gotten away with that if there was 24 hour news coverage.
Posted by: Brandon | July 2, 2009 1:28 PM
Jakes? Seriously?
Jakes is a fundamentalist who, despite his jolly exterior, thinks we're all going to hell.
If true, this really bothers me. I was willing to look the other way on a few things (*cough* same-sex marriage), because he's so much better than what we had and because we dodged such a humongous bullet in November. But Jakes? I don't know if I can wink that hard...
Posted by: Jeff Eyges | July 2, 2009 2:04 PM
From a diary at Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/29/141620/383), the chaplain at Camp David is on record as saying things like: "First we get the military, then we get the nation"
I'd be quite worried and disappointed if the president were attending services there.
Posted by: Hayate Yagami | July 2, 2009 2:39 PM
I echo the wish that political candidates would not have to profess their faith openly in order to win election to public office. As a non-theistic, voting American, I do not feel represented by ostentatious displays of piety.
I respect the personal choice of politicians to engage their own faith on their own terms, but I do strongly desire to live to see the day when the separation of church and state is truly respected in this country.
Posted by: Teleprompter | July 2, 2009 2:52 PM
James Hanley stated:
My reading of Reagan was that he took his relationship with God extremely seriously. His faith however was very personal, non-dogmatic, and certainly not orthodox Christian. A good example was his desire to proselytize Gorbechev on an intervening god who loved us when he should have been immersed in the details of our nuclear disarmament negotiations that were ongoing at that time. I would define Reagan's faith as it was expressed as extremely similar to the public religion as espoused by the framers though Reagan's beliefs certainly included non-materialistic beliefs.
My reading of Clinton was that he was much more religious in his Christian faith than he posed after we filter-out the shallow pandering all Presidents do to Christians. I believe Clinton worried about eternal damnation and tried to justify his actions with Bible verses to maintain some sense of confidence his soul was safe. A good example was how he tried to refrain from sexual intercourse with those women he cheated with (tried, but failed). His approach was that of a litigator who hoped his actions didn't meet the terms of the crime (blowjobs weren't adultery or fornication) while the foibles he did commit were somehow overlooked as findings of the court.
I agree with you regarding Bush Sr. H.W. Bush was both proud and comfortable with the legacy of his family and the culture from which they sprung forth and operated within. To Sr., religion was an inherent part of his culture and that of his forebears; where the accuracy of the supernatural claims of his denomination's dogma was ignored while embracing the rituals that helped sustain the cocoon of belonging.
I find Obama's statements of faith to be at extreme odds with both how he expresses himself on matters of science and how he adapts to new information. Therefore, at this time I'm clueless on him. It took me years to figure out whether Bush Jr. was engaged in an advanced and highly intelligent game of corrupt cronyism or whether he was instead an idiotic incompetent, in that same sense I really can't decide if or how Obama reconciles his faith to other tenets he supports. That'll make an interesting study. BTW, I'm now convinced Bush Jr. was an idiotic incompetent.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 2, 2009 3:43 PM
Brandon:
Well, maybe not, however we should remember that the people did not vote for President during Jefferson's time. Instead the electors within each state cast their vote without any obligation to consider whether it reflected election or even polling results. These electors were more elitist than the people and less prejudiced towards rhetoric than they were focused on the political philosophy of the candidates, or in Aaron Burr's case - his character. In addition, Jefferson was incorrectly branded as an atheist during his campaign and yet he still won.
I'd argue if that if we maintained indirect elections for President, say - state Congress' voted for their states; we'd have far less religion coming out of the Presidential campaigns and the President himself. The downside risk of such is that we'd sometimes get nothing but the best connected cronies or those best equipped to serve cronyism.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 2, 2009 3:59 PM
Don't get too carried away with your idea, Michael. Jefferson did, in fact, win the popular vote in those states that had a popular vote... 6 out of 16 in 1800 and 11 out of 17 in 1804. In fact, Jefferson won 60% of the popular vote in 1800 and 72% of the popular vote in 1804. As you mentioned, in the election of 1800, Adams accused Jefferson of being an atheist but it didn't seem to hurt him in the popular vote.
Posted by: Tom | July 2, 2009 6:51 PM
Damn, Tom, that's some nice data! I unilaterally declare you winner of the thread.
Posted by: James Hanley | July 2, 2009 9:20 PM
Michael Heath:
In what way? I must admit I haven't been paying close attention, but he seems to understand how science works, and his statements of faith seem to be fairly liberal/mainline. (If his faith statements were more conservative/evangelical, I could see a definite mismatch there.)
Posted by: Pseudonym | July 2, 2009 11:49 PM
Actually, it wasn't Adams who accused Jefferson of being an atheist. It wasn't even primarily Adams's supporters who were doing this. It was the supporters of Charles Pinckney, a third candidate. Pinckney's supporters wanted Pinckney to come in first and Adams to come in second and move down to being vice president, so, even though they didn't support Adams for president (because he opposed going to war with France), they still had to bash Jefferson enough to try to get him to come in no higher than third so Adams would come in second. Pinckney's supporters included some prominent ministers who started the ball rolling with their religious propaganda pamphlets against Jefferson.
Posted by: Chris Rodda | July 3, 2009 1:21 AM
Six months with no church? I like what that says about his priorities. I'll be happy if his "search" continues another three and a half years, or longer.
Posted by: Nemo | July 3, 2009 1:27 AM
Which is worse? That the president is expected to seek guidance from an invisible creature, or that he is to seek guidance from the people who speak for the invisible creature?
Posted by: Richard Eis | July 3, 2009 3:51 AM
You're really not contributing anything to the conversation, Richard.
Posted by: Brandon | July 3, 2009 6:52 AM
I stated previously:
I have heard Obama on two occasions refer to his commitment to taking what science understands in a manner common to how atheists declare such a commitment. Those two occurrences had Obama stating that no matter what our previous understanding was, if this is what we now understand scientifically, then our frame of reference for prescriptions must be to respond accordingly. Both occurences had him bringing up faith or belief not at all. He had in fact completely filtered out faith when discussing science philosophically.
I had never heard such a declaration from a person of faith quite like that. And while Obama's faith is more liberal than most evangelicals as you note, he has declared his belief in a resurrected Jesus Christ. That's an aspect of his faith which many liberal Christians quietly or vociferously reject, but not Obama, who claimed this faith in an interview with the Detroit Free Press during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 3, 2009 7:15 AM
Tom stated:
Tom - Quite the diplomatic fisking of me. I deserved this. I take pride in insuring my arguments are based on properly framed assertions and in this case I blew it. I should have solved my ignorance on when people in the states directly started voting prior to inferring none did this early in our founding. I would appreciate your linking to the source for the numbers you quote so I can fill in the gap in my education.
I do think my point about the respect elitism garnered during this period which tolerated anti-religious rhetoric from national leaders is still a valid one. The best concise argument I've heard is the last chapter in Gordon Wood's Revolutionary Characters. I realize you didn't object to that point which was the core point of my argument; you only objected to my assertion that all the states' electoral votes were direct rather than the fact you point out that some states derived their electoral votes from a popular vote.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 3, 2009 7:27 AM
Re Michael Heath
Actually, President Obamas' views on science and religion appear to mirror many scientists who claim to be methodological naturalists and philosophical theists, e.g. biologist Ken Miller.
Posted by: SLC | July 3, 2009 9:19 AM
SLC - the two occasions I referred to had Obama diverging from people like Ken Miller, who believes in theistic evolution and accomodationism. Obama's statements were more in line with Jerry Coyne's regarding the relationship between science and religion, absolutist in the sense that science alone provides us with our understandings and therefore science alone should provide premises for prescriptions.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 3, 2009 9:32 AM
Michael Heath:
My impression of Obama when he was speaking on these matters was that he was saying something along the lines of "IF science contradicts religion then science should win out" with the implication that such contradictions have not in fact occurred, and probably believing that kind of contradiction wouldn't actually be seen. I've also thought Ken Miller's beliefs were along the same lines. If you have actual quotes from either one that go against this I'd be interested in seeing them though.
I also think you're being a bit overly restictive when you said "he has declared his belief in a resurrected Jesus Christ. That's an aspect of his faith which many liberal Christians quietly or vociferously reject." While Christians that reject belief in an actual resurraction are probably restricted to liberals, I don't think the converse is that unusual.
Posted by: mcmillan | July 3, 2009 11:17 AM