Infrequently it looks as if every time President Obama goes to church, it ends up biting him in the ass. This Easter, the president found himself under assault after attending a carrier at St. John’s Church where Reverend Luis Leon spoke out in opposition to the “captains of the religious proper” for “calling again” African-Americans, homosexuals, women and immigrants. The experience was once simply the most recent by which President Obama unwittingly changed into associated with controversial rhetoric by doing what religious components on all sides of the aisle have long encouraged him to do: attending church. Possibly one of the best solution can be for the president to surrender God altogether.

Of course, lengthy prior to this most recent incident with Reverend Leon, the reverend most closely related to President Obama glided by the name of Wright. Reverend Jeremiah Wright‘s fiery sermons in Chicago, which infamously contained the phrase “God damn America,” threatened to derail Obama’s 2008 presidential marketing campaign. It was once handiest after Obama delivered his sport-altering speech on race that he was ready to place the Wright controversy at the back of him and regain his momentum within the marketing campaign.

Obama’s shut relationship with Wright was once undeniable. Wright carried out the wedding of Barack and Michelle Obama. It was once Wright’s words that inspired the title of Obama’s 2d e book The Audacity of Hope. But after the controversy erupted all over the 2008 marketing campaign, the Obamas withdrew their membership from Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ.

As soon as he used to be elected, President Obama’s reluctance to select and attend a new church was evident. He announced that he can be attempting to find a new house of worship, however in some way didn’t decide a new church except June of 2009, when he stated he could be using the non-denominational Evergreen Chapel at Camp David.

As a young man seeking to spoil into politics in Chicago, it will had been really useful for Obama to join Wright’s church. But as soon as he was once elected president, there were signs that he was returning to his previous views on faith. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes in regards to the lack of a single spiritual direction in his childhood:

“I was no longer raised in a religious family. For my mom, equipped religion too steadily dressed up closed-mindedness within the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness. Alternatively, in her thoughts, a working data of the world’s nice religions was a vital part of any smartly-rounded schooling. In our household the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology.

On Easter or Christmas Day my mom would possibly drag me to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New 12 months social gathering, the Shinto shrine, and historical Hawaiian burial sites. In sum, my mother considered religion during the eyes of the anthropologist; it was a phenomenon to be handled with an acceptable appreciate, but with a suitable detachment as smartly.”

This various religious heritage has frequently been frustrating for Obama. Because of the identify he inherited from his father and his time spent at a Madrasa in Indonesia, an inordinate collection of Americans falsely imagine he’s a Muslim. His persisted attempts to embody Christianity can come off as an attempt to counter that false narrative moderately than a fundamental belief. If his genuine beliefs do hew nearer to atheism, he indubitably knew that it could be much more impossible to get elected president in The united states as a non-believer than it was to get elected with the center name Hussein.

Now that President Obama’s political career is over and he’ll by no means once more run for place of business, why will have to he continue attending church at all? In all probability, like many non-believing loyal companions throughout the u . s . a ., he goes to services and products on main vacations for the sake of his wife or youngsters, with the act representing extra of a domestic tradition than a religious experience.

But after the controversies surrounding Reverends Wright and Leon, is it possible that President Obama’s church-going is doing him more harm than excellent? Especially if he doesn’t consider the fundamentals of what they are preaching, will have to he be forced to reply to for the controversial issues they say?

In 2009, Obama significantly became the first president to incorporate atheists in his inauguration address, declaring, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.” With no whole lot left to lose, now may be the time for Obama to transform one of those “non-believers” and quit on the whole church thing once and for all.

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