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Why Young Evangelicals back Obama?

Former “Bush-backer (Stephen Mansfield) pens pro-Obama book.” Steve wrote “The Faith of George W. Bush” which spent 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in 2004, his new book is “The Faith of Barack Obama.” Does this book represent the new voice of Evangelicals Christians?

Politico-”Young Evangelicals are saying, ‘Look, I’m pro-life but I’m looking at a guy who’s first of all black-and they love that; two, who’s a Christian; and three who believes faith should bear on public policy,” Mansfield, who described himself as a conservative Republican, said in a telephone interview. “They disagree with him on abortion, but they agree with him on poverty, on the war.”

His book, provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher, focuses more on Obama’s religious journey than his electoral prospects.

“For Obama, faith is not simply political garb, something a focus group told him he ought to try. Instead, religion to him is transforming, lifelong, and real,” Mansfield writes, going on to compare Obama favorably to Christian Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who he says erected a “wall of separation” between their religion and their governance.

By contrast, “Obama’s faith infuses his public policy, so that his faith is not just limited to the personal realms of his life, it also informs his leadership,” Mansfield writes.

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Posted by JohnKonop on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 4:54 am | under Uncategorized | |RSS 2.0 feed | Comments and pings closed. |

6 Responses to “Why Young Evangelicals back Obama?”

  1. JohnKonop says:
    June 16, 2008 at 5:01 am

    Obama Reaches Out to Young Evangelicals

    ABC-Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody broke the story of Sen. Barack Obama’s new program, the “Joshua Generation Project,” to woo younger Catholics and Evangelicals.

    “The Joshua Generation project will be the Obama campaign’s outreach to young people of faith,” an Obama source told Brody. “There’s unprecedented energy and excitement for Obama among young evangelicals and Catholics. The Joshua Generation project will tap into that excitement and provide young people of faith opportunities to stand up for their values and move the campaign forward.”

    But Roll Call reports today that the Home School Legal Defense Association might sue Obama for trademark infringement, since its “Generation Joshua” group has been established since 2003.

    “This is an improper invasion of our trademark and we’ve retained legal counsel to notify the Obama campaign to stop this,” HSLDA’s co-founder, chairman, and general counsel, Michael Farris, told Roll Call. Farris also wrote a 2005 book called, “The Joshua Generation: Restoring the Heritage of Christian Leadership.”

    Obama cited Joshua in his speech commemorating the Bloody Sunday March, in Selma, Ala., in March 2007, saying, “I thank the Moses generation; but we’ve got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn’t cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You’ll see it. You’ll be at the mountain top and you can see what I’ve promised. What I’ve promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You will see that I’ve fulfilled that promise but you won’t go there. We’re going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens.”

    It’s kind of surprising that Farris is talking about a lawsuit on this, since a quick Google search indicates that the idea is hardly original. There are more than a few ministries out there that include the words “Joshua” and “Generation.”

    There’s one in India, another in Texas, one in Los Angeles, and one in Maryland.

    There’s a CD with that title, a dance company, another book by a different author, and Pastor John Hagee uses the term to describe younger worshippers at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, and on and on.

    Is Farris going to sue all these people and organizations?

  2. JohnKonop says:
    June 16, 2008 at 5:03 am

    Young evangelicals seek broader political agenda

    HT-Southern Baptists, as a rule, do not drink. But once a month, young congregants of the Journey, a Baptist church here, and their friends get together in the back room of a sprawling brew pub called the Schlafly Bottleworks to talk about the big questions: President George W. Bush, faith and war, the meaning of life, and “what’s wrong with religion.”

    “That’s where people are having their conversations about things that matter,” the Rev. Darrin Patrick, senior pastor and founder of the Journey, said about the talks in the bar. “We go where people are because we feel like Jesus went to the people.”

    The Journey, a megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals, is representative of a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right.

    They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with HIV, according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.

    “Evangelicalism is becoming somewhat less coherent as a movement or as an identity,” said Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Younger people don’t even want the label anymore. They don’t believe the main goal of the church is to be political.”

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  3. Bill says:
    June 16, 2008 at 8:18 pm

    If they could get excited about small government conservatism that would be great. Small government = bigger Churches and Synagogues, temples, ect… Here’s a great book to read. It’s a bestseller. Not sure how much religion is in it. But some good tools to keep the politicians and bureaucrats in their cages.
    http://www.ronpaulrevolutionbook.com/

  4. JohnKonop says:
    June 16, 2008 at 8:20 pm

    Bill

    Are you voting for Bob Barr?

  5. Hugh says:
    June 17, 2008 at 4:33 am

    Chuck Baldwin, Constitution Party. And he will be better than Dr. Ron Paul on “Immigration” issues.

  6. Papa Ray says:
    June 29, 2008 at 7:59 pm

    Evidently this younger crowd has not listened to Obama’s Pastor spewing hate, division and racism along with his admonishing the blacks of his church (and the U.S.) that they are not fighting “The Man” hard enough. That “The White Man” is the cause of all of their problems.

    If these young evangelicals think that Obama set there for two decades and a lot of that doesn’t effect (affect) his thinking, his faith and his character…

    They will deserve exactly what he has in store for them and the rest of America.

    Ignorance is not an excuse, even for the young.

    Papa Ray
    West Texas
    USA

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