By Donald
B. Ardell – February 15, 2009
A recent Wall Street Journal article gave me reason to
wonder if Barack Obama might be a closet free thinker, as I suspect was the
case with JFK and even Abraham Lincoln. (There are a few articles and books
that speculate on these two possibilities.) Like my above-mentioned suspected
secret secular heroes, Obama seemingly goes along with traditional
Christianity. He makes a practice,
now and then, of exhibiting the requisite ritual piety (e.g., taking the oath
of office with one hand resting on a famous bible, ending speeches with God
bless America, attending prayer breakfasts and so on). After all, failure to do
so would risk giving Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson and other
deranged blasphemy law enthusiasts (who might welcome a new Inquisition) enough
bait for a feeding frenzy of holy umbrage.
The author
of the Wall Street article (Mark Tooley, "Where Will Obama Worship?"
January 18, 2009, page W11), certainly did not portray Obama as a non-believer,
let alone (to use a phrase coined by Sam Harris) a "fundamentalist atheist
rationalist neo-humanistic secular militant," which I would prefer in a
president. But, reading between
the lines, my hopes were raised that he might be quite a skeptic if not a free
thinker, even a personal god scoffer, like me. Here are excerpts from the Tooley piece, with a few added
notes of my own, that relate to my suspicions about Obama as a closet free
thinker.
* Mr.
Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, was a spiritual seeker drawn to many religions,
thus she had to know that all of them could not be true. She was looking
around, trying to sort out the BS and find something that made sense. Maybe her son observed some of this
questioning.
* Mr.
Obama's maternal grandparents were Unitarians. I don't have to tell you that these people have more in
common with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Christopher
Hitchens than Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson or Ted Haggart.
* Mr.
Obama's early Chicago activism took him to Trinity, a black congregation within
the United Church of Christ. The UCC is arguably America's most liberal
mainline Protestant denomination.
* Trinity
is known for its social liberalism -- on issues of gay rights and abortion
rights.
* Mr.
Obama seems to share the cool rationalism of the UCC's liberal New England
roots...Talking to the Chicago Sun-Times about his faith in 2004, he cited his
"suspicion of dogma" and of "the hazards of having too much
certainty" and said he preferred "a dose of doubt in religion."
* Mr.
Obama has deflected questions about prayer, Jesus and the afterlife.
* Mr.
Obama has defined sin as being out of alignment with my values.
* Mr.
Obama seems accustomed to the UCC's minimal use of ritual.
And far
from least but for now last of my points supporting Obama's skepticism about
orthodox religion was the revolutionary phrase in his Inaugural Address that
Paul Levinson called "the single most daring words in that
speech." That, of course, was
the reference to "Americans of all faiths and no faith." (Paul Levinson, "The Most
Revolutionary Phrase of Obama's Inaugural Address," Open Salon.com,
January 20, 2009.) Levinson saw this
statement as reflecting a "profound inclusionary quality in President
Obama's vision, a revolutionary acknowledgement by an American president that
non-believers are citizens, too."
The
inclusionary Inaugural might also have signaled two other realities if not
out-and-out acknowledgements of such realities: 1) at least one progressive
politician recognizes the growing strength and numbers of non-believers as a
force to be respected and treated fairly, and 2) America might have its first,
if not third, free-thinking commander-in-chief.
To which I
say, Thank you, Mr. President. 