The Faith of Barack Obama
From Publishers Weekly
As a veteran communications professional, it comes as no surprise that Mansfield commands an easygoing conversational speaking style that helps buffer some of the potentially loaded issues he chooses to tackle. While he may be best identified by his ties to the conservative evangelical community, Mansfield possesses the ability to explore divergent ideologies while acknowledging some of his personal red flags with a tone of utmost respect. Listeners in search …
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“The Faith of Barack Obama” disappoints those looking for a close-up view of his personal walk with Christ. While Stephen Mansfield is fair in describing Obama as a person of faith and makes it pretty clear which faith (Christianity), Mansfield also makes it obvious that this book was rushed to press without the author having had any personal interviews with Barack. He references a couple of Obama’s speeches regarding faith and race, references an Easter Sunday excursion he took to Trinity (Obama’s church for 20+ years) and gives credit to the campaign for being professional and helpful. Going to the Obama YouTube page provides an opportunity to see and hear over 1,000 videos of speeches and interviews that would flesh out Barack’s faith for any interested individuals much better than this book was able to provide.
One highlight of the book comes in chapter five: four faces of faith. Mansfield compares John McCain’s, Hillary Clinton’s, and George W. Bush’s faith to Obama’s. While Obama’s faith wasn’t fleshed out in this chapter, it seemed safe to assume it would be fleshed out in a following chapter since the whole book was dedicated to this pursuit. Disappointingly, that chapter wasn’t included in the book.
One measure of the usefulness of any book lies in its power to provoke a reader to mindfulness of alarming conditions in one’s community, one’s universe, or one’s own spirit. As I read and pondered Stephen Mansfield’s The Faith of Barack Obama, I became increasingly mindful of certain alarming paradoxes in American political life in 2008:
* How bizarre it is that personal character is usually kept off the table in political discourse while a candidate’s religion is now considered fair game. When a scandal occurs, as it so often does nowadays with Democrats, Republicans, and preachers, it is always a scandal of character, not of one’s stated religion.
* The central organizing principle that underlies the uses of religion and spirituality in American political life is bold hypocrisy and outright deceit. This has been true for decades, or perhaps as long as religion has been so used, but it seems especially clear today.
* Despite abundant evidence – not least in Obama’s presence itself – that we live in a post-homogeneous America, our politics are relentlessly constrained by homogenizing talking heads who are always willing to stoop low to achieve the populist posture of a “gotcha” moment in which they use association or innuendo to say, of Obama or anyone else, “See, he’s not like us!”
The aforementioned condition of rampant hypocrisy is not limited to one political party or one religious denomination. It is widespread. It is not my intention to cast stones here, but simply to state what should be obvious.
Religious self-presentation has become a routine element of political campaigns, often with no more rigor than might be involved in a candidate’s assertion, for instance, that she had “always been a Yankees fan.” No wonder, then, how often such calculations backfire with the drawing back of the curtains and the attendant protestations that we should “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
I recall a long period in my own adult life when I might have argued that Stephen Mansfield’s inquiry into the spiritual journey of Barack Obama, however elegant in its composition and thorough in its supporting research, was insignificant almost by definition. Like millions of others who were inspired by John F. Kennedy’s public persona, I grew up believing that religion should have no role in politics. Even if America’s mid-century notions of pluralism and tolerance operated within the boundaries of a seemingly homogeneous culture, they appealed both to our basic sense of decency and to our fuzzy notions of a living constitution that worked.
Those notions have come under relentless attack for decades, so that we are less likely to recoil reflexively from the very idea of a book such as Mansfield’s, as I and many others once did at titles such as Senator Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative or William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale.
I wonder if Mansfield’s book would have the same bookshelf appeal that it has today if it had been published under the title The Character of Barack Obama. That seems a bland alternative. But when I finished reading Mansfield’s book and put it down, what impressed me most was that I felt that I had just read a book of considerable rigor and thoughtfulness about Obama’s character and its origins, rather than anything so specific as a book about his religious faith.
I cannot fault Obama for fronting his “faith” as he has done, or Mansfield for writing about it. Without falling into a potentially dull recitation of second-hand news, Mansfield’s narrative manages to do justice to the extremely damaging – and, of course, deceitful — smear campaigns of guilt-by-innuendo and guilt-by-association that have tarred Obama as a Muslim extremist and, by selective use of the quotations of former Pastor Jeremiah Wright, as a bitter and unpatriotic black man. Under such stress, I don’t know if there is any other way for Obama to fight back, and I appreciate Mansfield’s chronicle.
But I admit that I will be somewhat more interested, if Obama is elected (as I hope that he will be), in an updated chronicle of the testing of his faith during his tenure as president. Whatever the ability of any campaigner to dance righteously across the religious dance floor of contemporary presidential politics, it is when a candidate becomes president that he (or, in the event of two very plausible circumstances, she) embarks upon a season of relentless preaching from America’s most powerful pulpit.
Should such a book become appropriate, I hope that Stephen Mansfield will write it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Faith of Obama : My Thoughts
I finished this book a while back but never posted a review. This book is very intriguing and bothersome at the same time.
[This review was originally written for a UK-based magazine]
This is a short book at about 130 pages (although with a 45 pages of appendices including texts of speeches) but it provides an excellent introduction to Barack Obama and the place that his Christian faith holds in his life. It briefly describes his upbringing by an atheist mother and Muslim father, his conversion to Christianity and his relationship with his mentor, Jeremiah Wright. The book doesn’t delve deeply into Obama’s political history but discusses a few of his political views and how they fit with his faith. There is a particularly helpful chapter which looks at Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and George W Bush and the way in which the faith of each of them works out in their lives.
The book was an easy read with some interesting anecdotes and no strong political axe to grind although I didn’t feel that I got a very in-depth look at the character of Obama, he still felt somewhat distant. The book accurately portrayed the rising importance of Christian faith in American politics and showed the different ways in which the faith of the candidates can be demonstrated. It is a helpful resource for those interested in American politics and in the man who may well be the next President.
4.0 out of 5 stars
I wrote this prior to election day – but it still stands.
Reading over the comments that this book has elicited on the Web, I am amazed at the number of Christians who, without reading the book, will so easily condemn it as a wholesale…
3.0 out of 5 stars
Review of “The Faith of Barack Obama”
Review: “The Faith of Barack Obama”
Title: The Faith of Barack Obama
Author: Stephen Mansfield
Published: Thomas Nelson, 2008
This is an extremely…
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Read
Policial conservative and author of The Faith of George W. Bush, Stephen Mansfield, has written a new book entitled The Faith of Barack Obama.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Faith of Barack Obama – Vague At Best
The Faith of Barack Obama by Stephen Mansfield was an intriguing idea for a book but a bit difficult to get through at times.
4.0 out of 5 stars
An even handed book
Overall I am impressed at the author’s ability to chronicle Obama’s faith story without appearing to have an agenda or political stance.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fair, honest report
Fluid. Subtle. Nuanced. Complex.
For those who embrace a worldview of certainty and absolutes- a view stereotypically associated with a fading era and generation- such words…
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fair book.
Thomas Nelson Publishers sent this book to me to review on the ol’ blog. I have to admit it’s a much better book than I anticipated it being.
3.0 out of 5 stars
It feels like the rush-job it was
Stephen Mansfield became prominent when he published “The Faith of George W. Bush” some 4-5 years ago, which became a big seller.
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Faith of Barack Obama – A Good Read Pre or Post Election
The Faith of Barack Obama is not about “converting” anyone from one political party to another. It’s more a biography of Barack Obama and an interesting read.