Calling out the Dobson
Posted on June 28th, 2008 by catalyst into the Has James Dobson gone crazy? categoryI know some readers of this blog tire of my fawning over Obama. And I get it. So, I tried all week to ignore this story, but um, my beautiful black hero is calling out one of our whack-job Evangelical Leaders. And I can't resist. So bear with me.
Recently, in a speech on Christianity, Obama had this to say:
"And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount — a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our Bibles now. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles."
So Obama basically implores people to actually read their Bible, and in turn, pokes at James Dobson. To which, the Dobson responds:
"I think [Obama is] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,"
Really? Obama is the one interpreting the Bible to fit a crazed idealogy? This what I believe we mean, when we say, the pot is calling the kettle black.
And in today's Washington Post, George Bush's former Deputy Assistant, Peter Wehner, writes a rather nice defense of Obama:
If Christian conservatives want to be taken seriously, they need to make serious arguments and speak with intellectual integrity. In this instance, Dobson didn't. He has set back his cause and made some of us who are evangelicals and conservatives wince.
Yeah well, I've been wincing about Dobson for years. Ever since he went from Focus on the Family, to Focus on James Dobson. So yeah, chalk this up as another reason, I'm voting for Obama. He annoys the Dobson.
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June 28th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
The category says, “has Dobson gone crazy?” My answer is yes. The problem is that most of evangelical Christianity has gone crazy when it comes to politics. It hurts the cause of Christ when the church and the government are so intertwined that people think that Christianity is a political movement.
We need to be involved in the political process, but the outspoken in the community have focused on issues that are not particularly Christian. Obama’s ridiculous guns and bibles comment is a reaction to the focus of Christianity on gun rights, the flag, taxes, free markets and other issues that have very little to do with Christianity. Many have tied themselves to the GOP over gay rights and abortion.
Pat Robertson has also gone crazy, but I think his is senility. The kind that let’s people say things that they think but would never say before they got a little loopy. Let me relay a funny story. During the 2004 election Pat Robertson was on TV with George Stepahopoulos. Robertson said that God had told him that going into Iraq was going to be more difficult than people thought: more time, more lives lost and messy. He said that he told Bush what God had told him and Bush went in anyway. Here is where it gets a bit crazy. He then went on to talk about how God is blessing Bush anyway. I said, “What?” How can you say that he made a big mistake that God did not want, but God is blessing him anyway? How can you say that on national TV? Well, that’s easy. So, much of the evangelical church is married to the GOP. Many of the TV people have hitched their trailer to the party.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:51 am
somehow i ended up on another thread and posted there what i meant to post here (dingdong–that’s what i get for working on too many things at once) so here it is:
amen to the wincing. and to Obama annoying Dobson (as well as those he thinks for) - I’d be tempted to give him my vote on this alone!
It’s way past the time for the Church at large to no longer be ignorant, but to study, research, find out what we each think for ourselves — in essence quit leaning on the Dobson’s, the Senior Pastors, the established-by-popularity-celebrity Apostles/Prophets to do our thinking for us. And speak up about it when the opportunity arises even if it goes against the typical party line respectively.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Just saw an article on another blog titled–”Dobson has Baracknaphobia”
July 1st, 2008 at 9:13 am
Jon Stewart does a thing on his show called Baracknaphobia — it’s pretty funny.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I have Dobsonaphbia