Monday, June 23, 2008

James Dobson, Barack Obama, and the latest heresy hunt

Dr. James Dobson, of "Focus On The Family", has grown weary of living outside the political limelight, so he's going to be attacking Barack Obama sometime Tuesday. He'll be claiming that Barack Obama has distorted the Bible, and if elected, will distort the Constitution.

The basis of this attack will be a speech that Obama made in 2006 to a liberal Christian group named "Call To Renewal".
According to the link above, Dr. Dobson will claim that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, has a "fruitcake" view of the constitution.

If the Dobson response to it goes online in a timely manner, I'll link it also.
Just for grins and giggles, here's a link to a previous Dobson jihad against Spongebob Squarepants, who Dr. Dobson thought favored a pro-homosexual, pro - gay and lesbian, pro -diversity worldview. (After all, Spongebob is often seen holding hands with Patrick the starfish.)
Many people will give Obama's religious views as much (if not more) scrutiny than his views on the economy, healthcare, Iraq, or Social Security.
Talk Radio junkies will hear and read about this all day Tuesday. I promise.
Just wanted to get ahead of the curve on this one.
Update from Tuesday, June 24th 7:00 p.m. Here is a link to the audio broadcast. I sat down with good intentions. I was going to type out the Internet's first transcript of this discussion between Dr. James Dobson and his right hand man, Tom Minnery.
My fingers wouldn't do it. They went on strike. They refused to type some of those sentences. And I don't think it'll ever be done. You couldn't outsource this horrific task to Burmese typhoon orphans. They'd turn up their noses and walk away, since they still have their pride. Lord have mercy, what a mess.
First, Dobson tries to get offended by Obama's statement about " 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?"
They try to infer that Obama was equating Dr. James Dobson and Rev. Al Sharpton.
Well, he wasn't equating them, you dogmatic twits...
He was contrasting the two, portraying them as being on opposite ends of a very wide continuum.
Then they attack his percentages, and his statement that 70% of Americans identify with an organized religion. Their point is that Obama coulda said "Christian religion" instead of "organized religion". That was enough to send them running for the Smelling Salts.
It goes on from there. Mostly downhill. They get into why the Hebrew scriptures (also known as The Holy Word of God that is without error) don't apply in certain times and situations like....here and now. They talk constitutional law. They talk about religion vs. morality.
These guys are done. Finished. They and their ilk have had a shot at fixing things in government since the Reagan era, and they've been weighed in the balance and found wanting (to pull a quote from the Book of Daniel). The glory has departed (to yank a verse out of 2nd Samuel).
If anyone can email me a link to a transcript of this thing for future reference, I'll send $10 to the charity of your choice.
I don't think Barack Obama is ready to be President of The United States. If he were to enforce his stated economic policies, it would be disastrous. I think he's lived in an academic/government bubble for too long (read the article about Mr. Obama's Neighborhood in The Weekly Standard).
But on Church and State issues? General religion issues? Obama's my man. That speech he gave to the Call To Renewal group is borderline brilliant, and he probably had no idea it would eventually be broadcast all over the world.
The Republicans really need to think twice before they send out any more Witch Doctors of James Dobson's ilk to attack Obama.
That era is over.

4 comments:

Francis Shivone said...

Thanks, I'll read the Dobson piece.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

They are Ichabod.
DG

TarrantLibertyGuy said...

I admit I haven't listened to or read Obama or Dobson's complete texts, just the soundbites the media has fed us. With that said, Dobson is doing two things: (A) possibly pointing out in Obama's potentially flawed theology and (B) Deflecting an examination of actual policy points that matter - as well as attention away from the failures of the current administration. Either way it's completely superfluous. If Dobson believes in original intent of The Constituion, he may want to recall the "No Religious Tests" (Article VI, Sec 3).
I think 'Liberals/Populists/neocons' get in trouble however, when they turn the Bible and The Constitution into 'living documents', claiming that the original intent of either documents are no longer valid in today's modern times - all while lauding their ancient wisdom.
Now that I think of it, I haven't seen much from McCain on his theological analysis.