Fascinating! But what I'd like to know is what Barack and Michelle Obama are picturing for the afterlife. NYT, can you clue me in? Because I feel like there are so many things we never found out about Obama the first time around in 2008. How about now?
But, of course, Jodi Kantor published a whole book about the Obamas. It's called "The Obamas." I bought it. On Kindle! So let me do a little search for an answer to my question. How are the Obama's planning to spend their eternal life? Do they believe there's a heaven, and do husbands and wives stay together there?
Word searches in "The Obamas" that returned 0 results: afterlife, afterworld, immortality, immortal, beyond the grave....
Other fruitless searches: eternal (2 matches, both to Obama's calling himself "the eternal optimist"), eternity (some short period of time is referred to as "an eternity in presidential time"), heaven (at the inauguration, Beyoncé Knowles sang "At Last" to the Obamas — "Life is like a song... Here we are in heaven").
In fact, there are only 2 occurrences of "religion" in the text of "The Obamas."
The first is not a reference to Obama's religion, just Obama saying that "Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country" (rejecting opposition to building a mosque near the World Trade Center site). The second is a reference to a poll that showed 18% of adults and 31% of Republicans thought Obama was a Muslim:
Only a third said he was a Christian, down substantially from the prior year, and another 43 percent said they did not know his religion at all. It was astonishing— some of the same people who had criticized him as being in the thrall of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., his former pastor, now believed him to be a devout follower of the prophet Muhammad.Wait! They didn't say they thought he was devout. They might simply have thought that he was Muslim by inheritance through his father, a cultural matter, which would be quite true. Why make fun of the people who are stuck within the constraints of a poll question? And why act as if that idea — Obama is a Muslim by cultural inheritance through the father — is inconsistent with the criticism of his attachment to Jeremiah Wright? Those criticisms had to do with anti-Americanism and left-wing ideology, not Christian doctrine. (I think I know why. Don't you?)
Some Democrats cried malpractice at the White House for not countering the Muslim rumors with professions of Christian faith: Could aides please just stick a Bible in the president’s hand once in a while? Get him to join a church already? Early in the presidential campaign, Obama had heavily marketed his own religiosity; he won his critical primary victory in South Carolina in part by speaking in churches and distributing literature showing his head bowed in prayer. But ever since the Wright scandal, the Obamas had tried to argue that their faith was a private matter, off-limits for public discussion. Inside the White House during the summer of 2010, as outsiders quietly begged for the president to showcase his Christianity again, there was virtually no serious discussion of the matter, said David Axelrod and others. Telling the president that his staff had been strategizing about his religiosity “wouldn’t be taken well,” Axelrod explained. Since the Obamas had arrived in the White House, they had attended church intermittently, they would continue to do so, and that was that. There was no creative brainstorming about ways to underscore the president’s Christianity for the public, another aide said, because all discussions had to take place within the category of things Barack Obama might actually be willing to do.And now the Romney campaign is doing the same thing, as Kantor's article says in the third paragraph:
... Mr. Romney speaks so sparingly about his faith — he and his aides frequently stipulate that he does not impose his beliefs on others — that its influence on him can be difficult to detect.But....
Outside the spotlight, Mr. Romney can be demonstrative about his faith: belting out hymns (“What a Friend We Have in Jesus”) while horseback riding, fasting on designated days and finding a Mormon congregation to slip into on Sundays, no matter where he is.And...
Just as Ronald Reagan deployed acting skills on the trail and Barack Obama relied on the language of community organizing, Mitt Romney bears the marks of the theology and culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints....
Mormons have a long tradition of achieving success by sharing secular versions of their tenets, said Matthew Bowman, author of “The Mormon People,” citing Stephen R. Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” which he called Latter-day Saint theology repackaged as career advice. ...Mr. Romney is quick to uphold rules great and small. During primary debates, when his rivals spoke out of turn or exceeded their allotted time, he would sometimes lecture them. When supporters ask Mr. Romney to sign dollar bills or American flags, he refuses and often gives them a little lesson about why doing so is against the law.Doing things by the book has been a hallmark of his career in public life. When Mr. Romney took over the Salt Lake City Olympics, which were dogged by ethical problems, he cast himself as a heroic reformer. As governor of Massachusetts, he depicted himself as a voice of integrity amid what he called the back-scratchers and ethically dubious lifers of state government....
Isn't this pretty much exactly the role we want religion to have in government? It's a strong foundation for commitment to principle and ethics. I'm not saying it's the only foundation, or that religions always support the best principles and ethics, but religion is the moral foundation for most people. It's still up to the individual to make sure that he is using religion for the good, especially if he goes into politics. There's no evidence that Romney has misused his religious values (or that the stranger aspects of Mormonism have anything to do with the way he would govern).
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