[M]ega churches understand that belonging precedes belief. If you show up at one of these churches, they don’t start off peppering you with questions about whether you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. They don’t quiz you on the Bible. They invite you in, introduce you around, give you something to eat, tell you all about the activities and groups you can be a part of from the young adult social club to the ballroom dance group to the men’s choir which for those of you not familiar that’s where they put folks whose voices aren’t quite good enough to be in the main choir.... The point is megachurches are built around ‘let’s get you if here, doing stuff, meeting people, and showing you how you can participate and be active.’ It is about agency and relationships, it is not about theology or handouts. And they’re trying to create a big tent where lots of different people can feel comfortable. Once that happens, then they can have a deeper conversation about faith in a way that folks aren’t spooked by....
The ideas are creepy and offputting, so hold off on the ideas and give people a place to sing and dance and socialize.
পোস্টগুলি
১১৮টি মন্তব্য:
"[B]elonging precedes belief."
That's just a nicer way to say "Get 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow."
James Madison was onto guys like Barack Obama.
Does that sound more like a Trump rally or a Harris rally?
The progressive liberals are modern day Puritans. They can’t do what Obama is asking because there is nothing in their church beyond their Puritanical beliefs.
I guess you could compare the Democratic Party to the Church of Scientology - once you are in, there is all hell to pay to get out.
Alternate headline, "How to create and expand a cult". So, it's a strategy of get people in without letting them know your true beliefs, lest they be turned off from policies like supporting trans surgery for minors, Hamas, lawfare against political opponents, massive deficits that cause inflation. Once they are in the choir, none of that will matter to them. But, that is exactly what happened in the last election. It did matter to them. Members of the Democratic Party megachurch didn't vote for their new pastor.
He’s never been to a mega church.
It could be like a mega church if it weren't for its politics of division, abortion stance, anti-family principles, support for sexual deviancy and the perversion of justice. Not to mention its self-serving, dishonest party leaders like Obama himself.
Oooo! Lot to unpack here.
1. Is there anything that Barack Obama doesn't consider himself an expert in/on?
2. In the doubtful event that Barack Obama is an expert on any one thing; I'm pretty sure Megachurches ain't it.
3. He's not describing the way a Megachurch works, he's describing the way a cult works.
4. None of this would work with the Democrat party because the party is totally based on a race/gender/sexual identity/potential victimhood pecking order.
Obama’s ridiculous ego at work. He sees he’s become irrelevant. It’s not “ooh a black president” anymore, it’s just another wannabe king trying to hold onto power over people.
This sounds like the same theme Hillary was using back in the 90s. Remember her speech on the “politics of meaning” ? Creepy, yes, and sinister. The Clintons and Obamas are disciples of darkness and have many followers. They appeal to a certain ilk; sad, marginalized people, who feel they are victims and need a benevolent dictator to take charge of their lives, with “programs”, to tell them how to think and behave. Self-determination has no place in their “religion”. I hope they fail.
My experience is that most churches don't quiz people on the Bible. If knowing the Bible was a prerequisite for going to church then all churches would be practically empty. Most Christians don't read the Bible and have no idea about the theology of the church they attend. Most Christians also don't attend any kind of Sunday School or Bible study and those that do are usually studying a book that is little different from self-help books but with some Bible verses thrown in so that it can get sold in a Christian Book Store.
So, Barry O'Bama wants the Democrat Party to openly become a religion.
And WHO, pray tell, does Barry think should be its Pope?
We know when to openly cling to our guns and religion and when to do it in secret.
Is there anyone left who still thinks Obama is anything more than a carnival barker? An adequate reader of somebody else’s words off a teleprompter?
Despite mine, and most here's, thorough disdain for Obama, this is an apt analogy - no different than Repubs saying "we have to be less noxious to minority voters" in a post-election moment of honest self-reflection. Can they behave this way? No. The media and academia serving as a check on the catechism purity of abortion, or DEI, or trans nonsense the way that old ladies chase off people who come to church in jeans or who play guitars instead of an organ at a small church.
Even that skill seems to be eroding.
Obama sees people joining the MAGA church.
Obama was once the savior, white liberals worshiped him. He created his own mega church, and got rich from it. His acolytes were chosen by him to continue his glorious self.
No one listens to barry anymore. The church he created is falling apart, and he can't understand how America can disappoint him like this.
Must hurt. The demon that progressives blamed for all problems turned out to be right about everything. Trump exposed them all. And he is dancing on their collective legacies.
Obama is still looking for this kind of reception. If my faith was not insufficient, I could have been a richer man this morning.
The Mahdi Picks for Gameday.
The Democrat Party is a Megachurch already. MSNBC and other Cult-Soviet media are the unquestioned high priests.
He's right that people seek a communion of persons and that an organization should focus on fostering community first. I just don't understand how a political party can in way meet that.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/a_tale_of_two_parties.html
Does the “deeper conversation about faith” happen before or after the collection plate is passed - er, I mean….before or after the votes are cast?
Barry spent part of his youth in a Muslim household. He’s not the (half) black Jesus; he’s the (half) black 12th imam returning.
Obama and the democrats love tbeir Jeremiah Wright Church.
The religion of government.
That's apt since Scientology has its own secret police and Obama also included a call to action in this odious speech, which sounded a lot like him urging the intelligence community to continue to undermine Trump. Others have noticed a not too subtle warning that his street teams Antifa and BLM are activating for round two of the Trump resistance.
Obama is softly demanding god like respect for a party of lies.
And, yet, he may have a point. The Dems lost this time because, for one thing, it was fun to support Trump. What was a bit like a mega church service was a MAGA rally. Even somewhat like a rock concert of a half century ago. They were happenings. Next time around, they will probably have commemorative T shirts. “We were at MAGA 24 #321 in Podunk, IA”. Harris had nothing really to join, and just a bunch of angry pink haired harridans engaging in scream therapy.
carnival barker....
Is that like dog chasing after carnival
Anyone who has not seen through this man from the moment he arrived on our national political scene has a profound comprehension problem. He is and always has been all about bromides and bullshit. To say he is a charlatan badly understated the point.
Something I wrote in 2010 about Obama's engagement with religion:
"Does Obama's past association with Trinity Church prove that he was (and is) a Christian? My source is "Dreams from My Father," chapter 14. While working as a community organizer, Obama was told that it would "help [his] mission if [he] had a church home" and that Jeremiah Wright "might be worth talking to" because "his message seemed to appeal to young people like [him]." Obama wrote that "not all of what these people [who went to Trinity] sought was strictly religious... it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to." He was told that "if you joined the church you could help us start a community program," and he didn't want to "confess that [he] could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." He was, he writes, "a reluctant skeptic." Thereafter, he attends a church service and hears Wright give a sermon titled "The Audacity of Hope" (which would, of course, be the title of Obama's second book). He describes how moved he was by the service, but what moves him is the others around him as they respond to a sermon about black culture and history. He never says he felt the presence of God or accepted Jesus as his savior or anything that suggests he let go of his skepticism. Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends."
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/08/its-sad-commentary-that-it-even-has-to.html
Obama's church has no baptism to erase the Original Sin of having been born a white male, and choosing to remain one.
STFU, Barry.
It still works.
I don’t have time to read all the comments has the MAGA Church joke been made yet?
"They're trying to create a big tent..."
Obama seems to be saying the Democratic Party is more narrow-minded, self-righteous and intolerant than the Christians they are always stereotyping as narrow-minded, self-righteous and intolerant. He's not wrong
Relevant Bob Dylan song. People that are walking into Mega Churches are seeking:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-gsDBuHwqbM&t=19s&pp=2AETkAIB
Oh, I think Obama would be aiming for a rung or two higher than merely Pope.
I doubt Obama or Rev "God Damn America" Wright are believing Christians. Of course, you can say the same about the Clintons and the entire Church Of England. Has Mr. O ever seen the inside of a Church since he left office?
Joy. Joy. Abort your "burdens". Let us bray.
Is an ancient religious cult rejected by our ancestors, which is being revisited by the modern family. Everything old is novel again. It seems green, but time will tell.
It sounds exactly like the People's Temple, in around 1978. Look it up. One day, Barack Obama wants to be the one handing out the juice.
Barack Obama is the modern-day Jim Jones, father of Nancy Pelosi.
He's been to the People's Temple, however.
He's describing how a cult works. He is an expert in that, peerless.
Probably not. His description is a rather idealized version. I've been to several megachurches that, although organized as evangelical focused on the Gospel, tend to be rather cold, impersonal and judgemental as a body. It's an unfortunate fact IMO that every wonderful small community focused church that grows into a large church starts to lose that focus and take on bureaucratic tendencies or put too much focus on a "star" preacher or both.
Note that those two fatal flaws also describe our major political parties for the most part. What seems like a movement has a difficult task avoiding either or both traps.
No suggestion of changing the polices to something voters might favor? Of course not…
Yes Rocco. Is there any megachurch that can compare to Islam?
This strikes me as Obama being honest. We know you don't like our policies, but we will pull you in with offers of free housing and healthcare. Then once you are comfy the Democrat Priests will take away your gas cars and appliances, open the borders, let criminals rampage.....
I wonder if good friend Joey pardons him.
Karma
Before the First World War, socialist parties organized all kinds of activities, hiking, cycling, etc. After that war communists, fascists and nazis picked up that idea and used it to organize whole societies into party-sponsored or state-sponsored groups and activities.
We're at a point now when we ought to be bringing together people of different opinions, beliefs, and ideologies, not making the party bubble bigger, all-containing, and impossible to escape. What Obama wants seems to be a bigger echo chamber for the party message, and activities and rewards to bring more people into the echo chamber. That's not likely to be good for the country.
Do megachurches sponsor activities to draw people in, or are church members spontaneously doing things that they enjoy and believe to be good and worthy activities? Are new prospects seduced by all the peripheral things the church offers? Arguably, they are more conscious than that. They want the food and activities. They also want something to believe in. How different is wanting deeply to believe from actually believing in real-world, practical terms?
Oh yes he did belong to a mover-and-shaker mega church in Chicago back when he was starting out, pre law school, in the community organizer position for the South Side churches, paid by the diocese...
Don't you folks remember the big scandal when he disovowed his minister to win big in 2008? Trinity United Chuch of Christ... Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Before Obama was "made" and became episcopalian... What good are you old people if you can't remember?
Make him, big dave...
You're too busy beating up on mothers, children and trans people. lol.
He's a pale version of his vocal self. Clinton too. Sounds like RFK Jr. that one...
You know what brings people together 7 days a week from 5am to 9pm in many communities across America for shared activities and organized socialization? Wait for it...
Y - M- C - A (it's fun to play at the... everybody now!)
Y -M- C - A !!
(they young men know. Get on board, oldies. heh. ;-)
Maybe, but the upsurge of Evangelicals in the 70s and 80s changed America. Before that, we counted members of mainstream denominations as Christians regardless of whether they believed or thought much about religion or not. Obama may be carrying on the mindset of his mother and her parents -- 1960s Unitarianism. Today, the Unitarians accept atheists and agnostics as members, and maybe they did even back then.
Well, there's always Wakanda, Barack.
Interesting you would cite Hillary. She was indeed the precursor to Obama in some ways. A striking companion piece to the Obama excerpt is the transcript of Ana Kasparian (of The Young Turks) being interviewed by Glenn Beck. She explicitly says the Democrats have become like a religious cult.
How could the Democratic Party be more like a megachurch than it already is? It already has compulsory tithes without accountability and slavish devotion to an authority figure appointed through mysterious means. Public profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour is the only box left unticked.
Too true. Every member of a church should read the Letters to the Seven Churches in John's Revelation. There's a reason God inspired those warnings and it is unfortunate that traits of modern churches are so easy to see in those passages.
"The progressive liberals are modern day Puritans."
Sure thing, except they like to kill the unborn.
As Captain 'Red Leg's' Terrill once famously said, 'Doin' right ain't got no end'.
"The ideas are creepy and offputting" And all its leaders grifters.
Obama does, however, hold the keys to redemption for those who ask nicely.
Imagine the uproar if these sentiments had been uttered by a Republican.
Exactly right. There's nothing wrong with a church striving to be a community, and it's not unfair to observe that so-called megachurches place community ahead of theology. But a political party is not a community, and it has no business trying to become one. It has to be all about uniting people on the basis of their political beliefs, regardless of who they are as individuals.
The Dems have long interpreted the "wall" between Church and State as a constitutional command to militant secularism. They seem to have started to discover that one doesn't just cast aside the anachronistic theology. You have also lost the central core of normative practice that makes people productive and cooperative. What's left? Nihilism.
Barack Obama: how can we miss him when he won't go away?
So Obama is admitting that the Democrat party is a cult based on feelings with zero rational reason to join. Is he the god of this cult? Does he wish to be?
They're not reading the room... yet.
This is more of a response to gspencer.
They can be Puritans. It only requires Purity of thought. I have noticed that it has gotten to the point where the "Pro Choice" women only accept the choice of killing the baby. The truly "good feminists" can't imagine becoming a "breeder"
If the mega church is United Methodist you will likely find no points of deviation from the list you gave.
Take your RACIST hate and disappear. We are about Making America Great Again, not whining that criminals getting what they deserve since there isn't anybody on the left who wants to help the citizens of this country.
Nina Turner
@ninaturner
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Jordan Neely was 30. He deserved to grow old.
☘️𝕃𝕦𝕔𝕜𝕪 Ƒʉͫcͧкͭιͪηͣ 𝕄𝕔𝔾𝕖𝕖
@LuckyMcGee
Other interesting things about Jordan Neely.
• In 2015, he kidnapped a 7 year old girl
• In 2019, he punched a 64 year old man in the face.
• In 2021, he punched a 67 year old woman in the face as she exited the subway, breaking her nose and fracturing her orbital bone.
And those are just a few of his offenses.
Jordan Neely had a long rap sheet, having been arrested 44 times, but never facing any proper justice for terrorizing New Yorkers, due to the lax policies of the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Neely should not have been on the streets to begin with, and Penny should never have been charged for protecting the innocent folks on the subway that day.
If BLM riots over a Not Guilty verdict for Daniel Penny, they will be elevating yet another POS to martyrdom and sainthood like they did with overdosed felon Saint George Floyd.
The country will once again be held hostage, for a ransom of Nike and Foot Locker stores, as well as any and all other businesses who don’t have armed security guards to stop them. 🙄
Love that for us. 😑
Thanks, Obama. 🖕🏼
https://x.com/LuckyMcGee/status/1865622810678423872
I was talking with a progressive friends last night (who - ahem - knows I'm Republican but probably doesn't suspect that I am more than a centrist who had to hold my nose to vote for Trump). She said that after the election, she dried her tears (she said that a little sheepishly but did cop to it) and announced, "We've got to Ronald Reagan this f***er!"
I was puzzled - they should find a former Republican to run as a Democrat? They needed a better communicator? Both decent ideas.
But what she said she meant was that they needed to find a celebrity who could get all the "stupid people" who "just don't think," people in the "stupid places" (she and her husband just visited us in Texas a couple of months ago and were honestly astonished at the ethnic diversity and lack of racism they saw - but apparently she's already forgotten that) on board because of his or her star power. Her thought was Matthew McConaughey, because he would get Texans to vote Democrat.
So she has the same thought as Obama: it's not our policies (they are of course correct). It's not that we don't understand what ordinary people want from government (and it doesn't matter because they don't really know, themselves). It's that we haven't figured out the best way to flimflam them.
Side note: she decried the "fact" that the country apparently isn't ready for a woman and especially a black woman as President; at that point, I did interject mildly that I was pulling hard for Condoleeza Rice to run back in the day. But it didn't interrupt her thought process: in a thinking nation, we Democrats should be able to slot anyone into that spot and win. But there are too many stupid people, so we just haven't tapped the right celebrity yet!
That's really the progressive idiot's mistaken understanding of what a mega church really is. Just like a Save the Whales meeting, only different. So pitiful.
Now, I will say that I don't think that was exactly Obama's intent with the megachurch analogy. He seems to be saying that Democrats should give up the purity tests, which is true. But he could've used a cable TV analogy instead - we should not eschew cafeteria Democrats and only accept those who are willing to pay for - help me out here, I don't know any TV channels any more, much less the lame unpopular ones - the golf channel and the fly fishing channel in order to get the NFL and NBA channels.
But they seem only to have the lame channels. When even college students (the male ones at any rate) turn against the party that says, "Poor dears, you took on more debt than you should have - let's just wipe that off the books, shall we?" then maybe your handout policies are less popular than you think.
I mean, for as long as I've been following politics, whenever a Republican wins, Democrats have wrung their hands and cried, "Why aren't all poor people voting in their own interests?" without the slightest motion that maybe some "poor" people don't consider government largesse to be in their interests.
This is hilarious. On November 19, Peter Thiel was the Valuetainment show. Patrick Bet-David uses the mega church as an example of what Obama did wrong with his scolding of black men. I've offset to the portion below. PBD describes some huge mega church he checked out in Plano, and how it was empty. So they go Easter and the sermon is scolding. The point being is you don't scold the one-a-year attendees on Easter Sunday. If you have to scold, you do that off-season.
Did Obama crib this "lesson" from PBD?
https://youtu.be/mluekCJ0QbA?t=533
Yeah Obama built himself a cathedral--a big tent of Obama acolytes. The only problem now is that folks are on to the fact that Obama, the New Lightworker is really just a modern day Elmer Gantry--with a side of Jim Jones when it comes to poisoning Democrat party political chances. Even Elmer Gantry reaches his "sell by date", and it's arrived for Barry Soetoro.
Barack is becoming more creepy and off putting as he ages. A wiser politician might suggest his party find policies that the majority of Americans can support. But that is probably a bridge too far for Obama.
Amusingly, all those “dumb black church people” Obama tried to organize in Chicago saw right through him. He didn’t have the chops to make it in Chicago politics. Not that Chicago politics are admirable, but they’re not for wussies.
Is Obama wearing blackface these days?
He looks a lot darker than I remember.
John Henry
Nailed it, Northof.... Especially #3.
I think you got that exactly correct, Althouse.
I thought Beto O'Rourke was going to do that... Remember him?
BTW Ronald Reagan's celebrity got him started in politics, But it didn't get him elected. And he worked very hard to clearly and forthrightly present himself and the policies he would pursue, and to persuade voters to support him. The mythical "celebrity" that your friend imagines doesn't exist on the left--because nobody wants what they are selling.
C'mon man, cut him some slack, the bible isn't taught in Madrasa.
I remember when this was DailyKos’s goal
NB: the Obama type Churches are crowds of brainwashed fools where worship of the Christ NEVER happens. Why would anyone settle for that?
I was going to ask the same thing, what about that hip young skateboarder, Beto. Maybe the best thing to do is ask her about all of her failed Democrat heros. "What about Beto, he's experienced !" What about Bernie? Hillary? Go right down the list, and make your friend tell you why each one of them wasn't successful, many of them even moderately. Ask her what was wrong with Tim Walz, he's an older white guy.
I think she's going to run out of explanations before you run out of examples.
I belong to a mega-church (Christ Fellowship in Palm Beach Gardens FL originally) when it was a small church led by a dynamic pastor who was a high school football coach. I was raised without religion but attended Catholic mass with my relatives when visiting; went to a Presbyterian summer church school as a young teen while visiting my best friend. Got interested in the Quakers when I lived outside of Philly but only attended a few meetings. Parents would take us if we wanted to go (to any church) but we were not forced to attend. Moved to South Jersey and went to several Unitarian - Universalist church sessions but I found them boring and unmoving. Thought myself as sometimes an agnostic, sometimes as an atheist and only did the typical foxhole prayers. Then I stopped drinking. I met Dion DiMucci and several times a week at lunchtime he would tell me about his path to Jesus (he was non-denominal Christian at the time and some of his "gospel" songs are terrific) but spoke to me of his experience and take on certain stuff, never preaching. We attended a Via de Cristo weekend together (De Colores!) and I believe I experienced an epiphany at that time about my recognition of faith. My (at-the-time) wife encouraged me to go to a nearby church and a postal clerk who worked for me sponsored me to the Via de Cristo weekend -- he pastored to the incarcerated and once invited me to speak about my sobriety at one of his meetings inside. I grew disillusioned with the pastor at the local church -- some fire and brimstone --- and decided to go to Christ Fellowship. The worship portion of the service moved me, the acceptance, the "sermons", and the love I experienced there kept me there and help me to stay sober these 30-plus years. Christ Fellowship is a non-denominational evangelical multi-site megachurch based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida with more than 28,000 in attendance each week on eleven locations throughout South Florida. When they only had the original location and a much larger facility across the street, they would rent out a public venue with 40,000 in attendance for Easter worship. For quite a while, I served as a volunteer in the kitchen on Sunday mornings, cooking buffet breakfast for 300-500 people at that specific location. I love my megachurch and the people in it. They do LOTs of charity-type work and outreach. When my oldest daughter died as the result of a fentanyl OD, she left behind two children. The youngest, my granddaughter, after a short stint with her aunt was placed in CF's House of Hope, joined a foster family. They enrolled her in King's Academy where they paid the tuition and she prospered. She finally was able to be placed with her paternal uncle and his wife --- her father never got to be with his two children as he could never pass a drug test. Thank God for CF, for Dion, for my pastor clerk, and even my ex-wife. I even sent Dion a CD of CF's first Worship service music which he said he appreciated and admired. (He has since decided to return to the Catholic Church of his youth and I don't see him as often as I used to- but I remember a early-on interaction we had. I arrived and he asked me, "Yo, Marcus! How you doing?" I replied, I guess, okay, under the circumstances. He offered: "Maybe that's why you are having difficulties -- you live 'under the circumstances' instead of dealing with them in such a way so they don't bury you."
second half: And as a non-denominational Christian for 30 years now (baptized once again as an adult), I thank the Lord I found him and shake my head at the generalizations by the Left of religion, religious people, and Christians in particular. When these critics bring out the old, tired cliches about hypocrites in the church who fail short of their proclaimed standards, I reply with the correct definition of "hypocrite" (which they always get wrong) and just mention that I try to follow the standards set forth by my Lord and Savior --- and then ask THEM what standards, if any, do they have and try to follow -- or are they just comfortable ridiculing those of faith and ignoring the good when it is done. Then, with true meaning tho they take it differently, I tell them that I will pray for them.
Lastly, I stopped years ago trying to express to my younger brother (who is a non-believer, one of those people who like to point out the poorest examples of Christians while excusing the behavior of those on the Left -- and, ironically has a church-centered daughter --- ) about how belief and faith have sustained me. Now I say to him, "If my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in his ultimate wisdom, has decided that you should be a pagan, rejecting God in all areas of your life and shall burn in Hell for all eternity, who am I to argue with him?"
A political philosophy shouldn’t be a substitute for religion. I think that’s where the Lightbringer was going with that. He sees progressivism/communism as a faith.
The similarities between political parties and religions.
There are very few ideologists in either. For most adherents it is about belonging and a shared community among a smaller group of the whole, be it the local church or local chapter of the party. For a smaller percentage of others it’s about connections to make more money. For the handful at the top, it’s a Grift.
Well said.
He belonged to the Rev. Wright’s mega church in Chicago.
Is AA saying Christian doctrine is creepy?
Barky has already served up oceans of kool-aid.
Cults get a bad name...
I've witnessed some government and academic DEI events. The government has rotating "appreciation" categories by month, to include Black History Month, Hispanic, Asian-American, Women, LGBTQA+, People with Disabilities, Veterans, etc., etc., etc. They typically have a "celebration" meeting event for each, sometimes with snacks/food. The content of these 1 to 3 hour sessions includes inspirational singers, testimonials, dance or culture-specific performances, celebrity keynote speakers, etc.
In other words, they already are religious services and have been religious services from the time they were created. Obviously, the only groups that are never even indirectly celebrated in these Woke religious services are White males and Christians.
I agree with Obama, mostly because I have a dim view of Obama, the Democratic Party, and Megachurches. He's telling on himself here.
Where are the mega churches that champion chopping off genitals of prepubescent boys? Every church that I know of that does not lead with doctrine is dying or dead. Obama's failure is ontological. Do it like churches do it and sucker people in? I already know you reject me Obama... Why would I want you to include me when I know it's a setup to be rejected. At least churches are upfront that their values are contrary to average person coming in off the street. Transparency. Honesty. Directness.
That one had not occurred to me. But he was in charge of the Jan. 5, 2017 meeting where the Flynn and Russia, Russia, Russia were hatched.
There were more Obama/Biden bumper stickers in suburban Oak Park than the adjacent west side of Chicago. And very few black people in Chicago wore tribute-style t-shirts or jackets featuring Obama.
Part of the corporate DEI grift is visiting other companies for speeches and giving out awards.
"Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends."
Isn't that what the Rev Jim Jones of Kool Aid fame do in San Fran before the heat got too hot. Twist christanty into democratic communism. Obama did get religious teaching in Islam as a child.
They want public, emotionally charged, enthusiastic acceptance of the Almighty State as lord and savior.
"They want public, emotionally charged, enthusiastic acceptance of the Almighty State as lord and savior."
Only when they're in power.
Bruce Hayden: "What was a bit like a mega church service was a MAGA rally."
Yes, this. MAGA is (pun intended) a broad church. As concisely illustrated by Trump's cabinet picks. But continually illustrated by the diverse cast of thousands at his rallies: union workers, rich people, law & order, libertarians, libertines, devout, decadent, dopers, curious local people, Trumpheads following the tour, people who can't stand H1Bs, people whose parents were H1Bs, etc, etc. The only thing that holds them together is a CS Lewis-ish "Mere Trumpianity" of just wanting the US government to try, just try, to work for Americans for a change.
The Dems could do the same - Bernie came close - but they just can't help themselves: they instinctively take the short-term gains they get from setting people against each other.
JSM
There is a purity test to join the Democrat party - you must denounce Trump. And of course bend a knee and kiss Obama's a... ring.
Jimmy said…
“Obama was once the savior, white liberals worshiped him. He created his own mega church, and got rich from it. His acolytes were chosen by him to continue his glorious self.
No one listens to barry anymore. The church he created is falling apart, and he can't understand how America can disappoint him like this.”
Obama’s coalition now has been fundamentally transformed.
What's the GOP test on Trump and Obama?
I want to add that this is a dear friend. She is progressive, yes, but she's dealing with the election results in a more adult way than some others in our lives, and she is focused on the future. I think she's entirely wrong in diagnosing the problem her side has, but I very sincerely hope someone over there figures it out and gets it right, because we NEED at least two parties with reasonable ideas that can be hashed out.
I thought Beto O'Rourke was going to do that... Remember him?
The first political rally I ever attended was for Beto, accompanying our newly 18yo daughter and her friend. He was so late getting there from west Texas that the girls themselves decided they wanted to leave and go to House of Pies instead.
The second political rally I ever attended was for Harris, in Houston, this year - the famous "Beyonce rally," dubbed the "reproductive freedom rally" by the Harris campaign. We took this same progressive friend and her husband (also progressive), because it was announced while they were visiting us and they were excited to go. It was better set up and better attended than Beto's, which was of course a primary-season rally. The non-stop conflation of "curtailment of reproductive freedom" and cases of clear medical malpractice got very old.
In that instance, my husband and I told our friends, about 20 minutes or so into Harris's (late) speech, that we were going to go wait for them at a nearby brewery, and they immediately got up to come with us, because she wasn't saying anything they hadn't already heard multiple times.
Kate's comment is 100% true of a ministry's core mission, which is to minister to people. Being a community first and a source of teaching second is following the Jesus model as intended. But other organizations have very different core missions, so the "foster community" model doesn't work. Especially in commercial endeavors where the service or customer needs come first. Politically speaking in the past both parties wanted to make America great but had different views on how to do it, sometimes as with slavery very different views. Since Wilson the Democrat Party has slowly transformed into a generally anti-American organization and they even explicitly say that demonstrated patriotism is a sign of right wing extremism. One of the successful appeals Trump made was standing for traditional American values and it's a message that resonates across all demographics and if 1976 is any indication then the sesquicentennial celebrations in 2026 will also be unifying around our common bonds.
Somehow this reminded me of a previous "black leader," Malcom X (from memory) "The church is no better than going to the club. A bunch of ignorant n######s go in, spend an hour singing and waving their arms in the air and come back out just as ignorant as when they went in."
This makes sense, because Leftism has all of the hallmarks of a religion already.
Obama admitted he had to dump his white girlfriend and find a black woman to marry to make it in Chicago. He had to find a politically connected black church, and there was none better than Rev. Wright’s. But he still never gained the authenticity he was seeking and pissed off a lot of black political leaders for dirty tricks he and his white advisors played on his opponents as he rose through the ranks. He got out of Springfield and Chicago and to DC as fast as he could.
He’s not loved in Chicago, except by the radical white leftists and Palestinians.
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