I think Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News summed it up best:
So here’s the round by round so far. James Dobson of Focus on the Family disses Barack Obama’s theology. Jim Wallis of Sojourners disses Dobson’s theology. Then Will Hall of the of Southern Baptist Press backs Dobson.
Then Obama disses Dobson. “”I think you’ll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes.”And the Rev. Kirbyjohn Caldwell, an Obama supporter, announces the creation of a website called “James Dobson Doesn’t Speak for Me” that compares statements by Obama and Dobson. (It’s really very good. Direct quotes offered side by side. I recommend the lick, no matter what you POV is on the matter…)
And oh, here‘s a good idea: Rabbi Brad Hirschfield decides to critique the back-and-forth in the name of civility. (Rabbi, if I were you, I might have let this particular sectarian scrum pass me by…)
Are we done rasslin’ with this one yet? Here’s the simple truth: Obama and Dobson have very different understandings of Christianity. The “truth” is not going to be settled in this world unless Something Happens.
As a matter of politics and public policy, the only question I really want to see Obama answer on this topic is: How do your religious views inform how you would govern as president? But that’s just me.
Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”
“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.
Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.
“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.
“… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”
I agree with Dobson if he is talking about himself in the above statement.
It seems to me that Jesus’ New Testament teachings are fine when we agree as Christians, but that we tend to trot out the OT when we want a little of the “eye for an eye” handling of a situation. I struggle with this all of the time… even with mission work. I think I know what Jesus would have me do, but my human weaknesses and fears make it easy to justify not doing it.
What I understood Obama to say in the above quote was that the crux of the SotM was about Jesus talking about the “least amongst us”… and our DoD’s response with Guantanamo would not be consistent with “love thy enemies”. But what do I know?
Thanks for the link… thought provoking.