On the Bible: Dobson vs Obama

It didn’t take long for Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family to lash out at Barack Obama. I wonder why I’m surprised…

Dobson came out with a program today claiming that Obama is distorting the Bible and Christian traditions. The funny thing is that Dobson’s program is based on a June 2006 speech to the “liberal Christian group Call to Renewal”. I guess Dobson couldn’t find anything newer….

Granted I have not listed to the actual Focus on the Family program (if any has, please email me or leave a comment) – but I did find an news article based upon a pre-release recording of the program. According to the reporter, one of the things Dobson has a problem with is the following quote by Obama (as recorded by the AP):

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.

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."

[@more@]I don’t know about you, but I think Obama is bringing up a valid question. There are lot of different views of Christianity and different interpretations of the Bible. However, Dobson thinks other wise:

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said.

This makes me think about today’s earlier post about “The Pew Forum: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”. In this post, I mentioned that 47% of Evangelical churches believe that their interpretation of the Bible is the ONLY true interpretation. I can only guess that Dobson falls into the group….

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A friend made this observation about the article:

This quote is full of irony.

"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his[...]notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?"

Did you notice who said that? That is Dobson making that complaint! Mister "force morality into law" is making that complaint against the guy who wants each person in the aforementioned democracy to have the freedom to choose. Un-freaking-believable! A government is supposed to keep order in a society–not match a religion's beliefs in their entirety. Dobson making the fictitious complaint that someone else is "forcing" something on him is too rich. And in the psychology arena, it's called "projection".

Interesting.

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For the record, I’m not a big Obama supporter; nor am I a big McCain supportor. I just don’t like the way Dobson is doing things now days..