Right before his own sex scandal broke Dinesh D’Souza gave a telephone interview accusing Obama of attacking traditional Christian values on Rick Scarborough’s “40 Days to Save America.”
Why is Obama on the social issues — and I’m thinking here of abortion, I’m thinking here of gay marriage — why is Obama so aggressive in attacking the traditional values agenda?
…I think for Obama colonialism is identified not just with the soldiers but also with the missionaries. Remember it’s the missionaries that went alongside the conquerors, the conquistadors, came to the Americas and worked on converting the Indians and later missionaries went to China, India and Japan. So I think this is the problem, Obama doesn’t like traditional Christianity because he identifies it with colonialism. Obama’s own Christianity is more of a Third World liberation theology, a very different kind of Jeremiah Wright type philosophy, summarized in the idea that America is the rogue nation in the world.
I’m not sure D’Souza is correct that Obama has anti-colonial attitudes, but he is 100% right about liberation theology. What he is calling “traditional theology” is not the original teaching of Jesus. What many call “traditional Christianity” was born out of the crater of the Roman Empire. It was designed by an emperor who saw in Christianity an opportunity to unify his empire if only he could replaced Christianity’s original emphasis on love and justice with an obsession for doctrine and private morality.
The emperor Constantine forced Christian bishops to come together to craft a creed that would replace the sermon on the mount as the heart of Christianity. Whereas Jesus commanded followers to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, the new religion claimed that by parroting it’s creed believers would be saved. Whereas Jesus overturned the tables of oppression, the new religion told followers to submit to their rulers no matter what. Whereas Jesus sent his followers out with a message of love and justice for the whole world, the new religion said that “conversion” meant joining the institutional church.
So I believe that D’Souza is correct when he says there are two incompatible visions of Christianity and that we must choose between them. I just believe he is trying to get people to pick the wrong one.
Yes! And there was also the subsequent development and popularization of a theology of redemptive violence hand in hand with that of substitutionary atonement, which was not a part of the teaching of Jesus and which was used to justify colonial adventurism and conversion at the point of a sword.