Prayer Made PublicFollow

To think it wasn't written with the expectation of someone removing it and publishing it in the media would be silly.

While I knew it was sure someone would check out what he wrote on the note, I would have hoped they could have some respect for tradition and put the prayer back once they had read it and taken a photo of it for Fox News.

I'm sure Fox offer to pay anyone willing to check out what it said enough to make such a tacky act worth some poor students time.

Do we think that Obama is an atheist?

I never fail to delight at the naïveté of people who think a multi-million dollar PR campaign involves 'accidental' messages.

Plus, I hate myself for thinking in the same way as Smash. It makes me want to bone blonde american girls.

I have a similar view to Smash's, but a more British perspective.

From where I'm drinking, it seems that Godliness (read 'christianity') is a prerequisite for office in Americaland.

Here in the land of dentures, a politician's religion is at best irrelevant, but more often something they keep quiet about. When a journalist asked Bliar about how his faith affected his role as Prime Minister, Alistair Campbell (Bliar's press advisor) interrupted with the now famous line "We don't do God".

All of our recent PMs have been devout church-goers but have consistently resisted any attempts for this to be picked up by the media.

In a recent interview Blair said that unlike USA, in UK a politician who refers to his faith is seen as "a bit of a nutter".

Nutter

Here's a rather long article about it. Part of his faith seems to be in the importance he places on activism and actually doing things.

Does anyone decide to enter public life at 20?

He joined Trinity in the late 80's ('88?) with his first run for public elected office in 1996 (State senate) and first stab at federal office in 2000 (failed House run). Now, whether you want to count his prior community activism, litigation work, etc as "public life" is up to you. He's admitted that he first started making connections with Trinity and other local churches because he felt he needed their support in his community organization efforts.

Edit: Xsarus says 1990 for his baptism so I'll go with that. I picked 1988 based on the constant "He knew Wright for TWENTY YEARS!!!" cries. He was married at Trinity in 1992 so sometime before that, anyway.

Even more so than his baptism, he was a kid raised under a variety of religious influences, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim and so even if he never felt that anything was scripturally accurate I find it easy to believe that, when he looks at his life, he feels that he's been blessed by something "more". Not to diminish the role of personal gumption and good ole fashioned luck, naturally.

Edited, Jul 25th 2008 4:52pm by Jophiel

Newp, sure didn't.

Oh, that's true.

Well, that explains the conversion thing, then.

Interesting stuff about George W's religion: http://www.slate.com/id/2186343/entry/2186344/

It's hard to pin down what he actual believes in. He seems to view faith as a path to finding strength within one's self, but cares little for any actual devoutly theological dogma.


Kinda interesting how someone who says God speaks to him directly has so little explicit concern for God himself, just the idea of God.




Edited, Jul 25th 2008 7:54pm by trickybeck

Yes we do.

Someone who's willing to sell a staged prayer for a buck is certainly going to have a hard time passing up such a delicious opportunity as ousting a political ruse coordinated by a presidential hopeful. Not something to trust to the media when it's so likely that it will take care of itself.


Christ, you people are fucking slow. There is no yeshiva student.