A Promised Land and a President's Faith

We've finished up digging out from under what was the first significant snowfall of 20/21 and even our 15-20 centimetres was not overwhelming. Now, to blog...

I've been thinking about the title of the next stage of former president Barack Obama's ongoing biography. This volume is A Promised Land, and that title certainly invokes the biblical story of the exodus from Egypt by the people of Israel and how they eventually crossed the Jordan River into the land promised to them by God.

I haven't read A Promised Land although I may at some point. I'm an admirer of Obama, and find it refreshing that he is able to pen something more than a misspelled, angry tweet. He is a person of substance and integrity, and a person of Christian faith with what might be described as "generous orthodoxy." He was never a darling of the religious right, as his successor, Donald Trump, inexplicably was, but that was because he had a respect for women and their reproductive choices and a willingness to listen and learn about LGBTQ2 rights. Oh yes, and he is Black. 

I've read that in the book he admits to a certain skepticism about organized religion but has been a Sunday worshiper through the years and valued private prayer. Fair enough, when it comes to religion. It has been weaponized on the American political scene in ways that are abominable and divisive. 

We have already heard and seen how faith matters for recently-elected Joe Biden, who has brought aspects of his Roman Catholicism into speeches. On Sunday Biden signed an executive order reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, an agency which Trump left unstaffed during his tenure. He was probably too busy doing photo ops with evangelical leaders in the Oval Office. 

Here is a faith-related quote from Obama's inauguration in 2009: 

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. … To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”