President Obama's Eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney

What a wonderful, powerful eulogy that President Obama gave today at the funeral of Reverend Clementa Pinckney. And his observation that we are all sinners to whom God extends grace and we are left to decide how we will receive it was right on. I also loved his sometimes off-key rendition of 'Amazing Grace.' His use of Hebrews 11:13 at the beginning of the speech was wonderful.

Presidents must, in times of national tragedy, function--in a phrase I once heard Reverend Billy Graham use of Bill Clinton--as kind of national pastor. President Obama did that today, reaching out to all Americans, seeking mutual understanding and respect under the grace of God. 

You don't have to like the President's politics to appreciate the words of healing and hope he shared today.

President Obama's Tribute to Father Emil Kapaun

Army chaplain, Father Emil Kapaun, was posthumously awarded the nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, at the White House yesterday. The president's tribute begins at about 1:30 in the embedded video.

I will be honest: I was moved to tears by Mr. Obama's description of Father Kapaun's extraordinary faith and bravery. I think that you might be too.

In any case, it is worth hearing.

A Prayer for President Obama As He's Inaugurated This Martin Luther King, Jr. Weekend

Here is one of the petitions we offered up during the Prayers of Intercession during the 10:15 worship service this morning at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio.

Gracious, mighty King, today in a private ceremony and tomorrow during the traditional public celebration, President Obama will be sworn in to a second term as our president.

These events will come during the Martin Luther King. Jr. holiday, in which we remember the Christian leader who challenged Christians, white and black, and all Americans to stand against public policies which demanded Christians and others to worship false deities like racism and the lie of white racial superiority.

Although bigotry still rears its ugly, sinful head among us in our culture all the time, we pray that, using Christians who follow King’s example, You will crush racism out of existence.

As Americans who love our country, the Constitution, the freedom to worship that we enjoy, and the peaceful transition of power which is part of our national life, we pray your blessings on President Obama.

As he is inaugurated, we pray that Your Spirit would give him your wisdom, that he will be open to your wisdom, that you will protect him and his family from all danger and harm, and that throughout his tenure, as we individual Americans live in daily repentance and renewal, moved by the witness for Christ they hear from individual Christians like us, will come to follow Christ and so have peace with God, now and in eternity. Lord, in Your mercy, hear our prayer.

"Born in the USA"

Regular readers of this blog know that I wade into political waters reluctantly. Usually, if I do write about political matters, it's to make historical comparisons* or to discuss the politics, the strategy and mechanics, of politics.** But I am loathe to express my personal political convictions; because I'm a pastor, I don't want to claim that my convictions are God's convictions. The Bible doesn't lay out a political program and anyone who claims otherwise, whatever their political philosophy, dishonors God. Attempts by preachers and others to use the authority of God to prop up their own political preferences are either cynical or idolatrous, reducing the almighty God of the universe to self-chosen propositions which become objects of worship.

The only circumstances under which I deem it appropriate for pastors or church bodies to comment on the political or governmental processes is when justice or the love of neighbor, both commands of God, are clearly at issue.

In recent weeks, billionaire and showman Donald Trump has been creating a stir by intimating that he may run for president. Among the main "issues" he has been raising is whether the current President of the United States, Barack Obama, is, as required by the United States Constitution, a natural born citizen of the country.

This question first arose during the 2008 presidential campaign, when people were heard to say that the African-American senator from Illinois with the funny-sounding name wasn't "one of us."

But, as pointed out by conservative Republican Linda Chavez in a recent column, the facts of this "case" aren't even disputable: Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. (Contrary to what some have said, it should be pointed out that this was approximately two years after Hawaii was admitted as a state. But even had the President been born in Hawaii, a US territory, prior to the state's admission in 1959, he would still be considered a natural born citizen of the country.) For more detailed information, you can go to FactCheck.org, a non-partisan site, to confirm that the President was, indeed, born in the USA.

So, why am I writing about this matter?

It's simple. Donald Trump may be a demagogue and a racist, but I don't think he's stupid. He can't be ignorant of the fact that the President is a native-born US citizen. He appears to be striving to give life to what has already been shown to be a lie, appealing to a strain of racism in our country that refuses to believe that someone who doesn't look like any previous president and doesn't have a name like any previous president could be qualified or worthy of the office.

Trump has said that the President couldn't be intelligent enough to be admitted into an Ivy League law school. Trump has said that the President is incapable of having actually written two best-selling books, that he must have had ghost-writers.

The clear insinuation is that everything about the President, including the location of his birth, is a fraudulent hoax. The facts say otherwise. (If you're inclined to believe any of what Trump has said about the President, you might want to read The Bridge. The author isn't a spokesperson for Obama, but a straightforward biographer, who sometimes says less than complimentary things about the President.)

But if Trump was simply wrong on matters of fact, I wouldn't be writing this post. (I myself get my facts wrong, as I freely admit.)

Donald Trump is engaging in race-baiting. Whether he uses the words or not, he portrays the President as the unworthy beneficiary of affirmative action for getting admitted to a prestigious law school. He intimates that because the President is black, he couldn't possibly write two literate books. And because he's black, Trump believes, the President can't possibly be worthy of holding the highest office in the country.

Christians, commanded by God to love our neighbors as we love ourselves--even when the neighbor is the President of the United States--and to love justice--even when the victim of injustice occupies the White House, must speak up.

Donald Trump needs to be told that he is clearly and sinfully in the wrong. Whether he gets the message or cares about it or not, that's what I'm doing here.

What do you think?

*I'm a life-long student of history and majored in Social Studies Education, with a major concentration on History, at Ohio State, from which I graduated in 1975

**I used to be involved in politics.

Just My Opinion: Watch Out for the Beijing Regime

Charles Krauthammer is no fan of President Obama, but he had no use for the silly (and largely misinformed) carping over the cost of the president's recent trip to Asia. I agree with Krauthammer. It's important for Presidents of the United States to go abroad for these diplomatic missions. The president is America's diplomat-in-chief. When presidents take such trips, it is in everybody's interest that he be kept safe and protected.

More substantively, I emphatically agree with Krauthammer on the wisdom of Obama's special overtures to India. The US and India, along with the rest of the world really, has an abiding interest in these two countries having strong relations. That abiding interest is the Chinese government, an enemy to its own people's freedom and an enemy to the peace and stability of the world. A partnership between India and the US is essential for strengthening democracy, for checking China's growing military power, and for preventing the world from being sucked into China's economic vortex, with permanent trade imbalances and endemic loss of employment opportunities. (That's why the President was right to say that the greatest object of his diplomatic mission was "jobs." That's really at stake right now in this era of unscrupulous business, environmental, economic, and human rights practices on the part of the Chinese government, practices that, along with the West's undisciplined spending and use of credit, is slowly turning the world into a playground for the Butchers of Beijing.)

President Obama's endorsement of India's desire to become a member of the Security Council of the United Nations is sensible for both the US and India. The council is reserved for those nations that are deemed major powers. As Obama pointed out in India that with major power status comes major power responsibilities. (And I would say, major power expectations.) India was not a major power after World War II when the UN was established. But it is now. That needs to be acknowledged.

Krauthammer explains very well why Presdent Obama's trip to India was so important for the US and the world:

[China's] hegemony is the growing source of tension in Asia today. Modern China is the Germany of a century ago - a rising, expanding, have-not power seeking its place in the sun. The story of the first half of the 20th century was Europe's attempt to manage Germany's rise. We know how that turned out. The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China's expansion.

Nor is this some far-off concern. China's aggressive territorial claims on resource-rich waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are already roiling the neighborhood. Traditionally, Japan has been the major regional counterbalance. But an aging, shrinking Japan can no longer sustain that role. Symbolic of the dramatic shift in power balance between once-poor China and once-dominant Japan was the resolution of their recent maritime crisis. Japan had detained a Chinese captain in a territorial-waters dispute. China imposed a rare-earth mineral embargo. Japan capitulated.

That makes the traditional U.S. role as offshore balancer all the more important. China's neighbors from South Korea all the way around to India are in need of U.S. support of their own efforts at resisting Chinese dominion.

And of all these countries, India, which has fought a border war with China, is the most natural anchor for such a U.S. partnership. It's not just our inherent affinities - democratic, English-speaking, free-market, dedicated to the rule of law. It is also the coincidence of our strategic imperatives: We both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China. 

Mind you, all of this is just my opinion (and Krauthammer's). I'm still just a preacher and I'm not foisting a social statement on anybody. These views haven't been brought from Mount Sinai. But I nonetheless think the world would do well to watch out for the regime in Beijing.

The Obama Effigy in Plains, a Sad Report

I was saddened to read the report of an effigy of President Obama being hung in Plains, Georgia, the hometown of former President Carter. In August, 2004, I wrote here about a visit my family and I took to Plains and Sumter County:

My family and I sat in a Pizza Hut in Sumter County, Georgia and it was dawning on us: This place was different. Throughout this rural, deep South community, blacks and whites related to one another with an ease and friendliness one seldom sees in the North.

We had decided to stop in Sumter County on our way back from Florida, where my daughter had been on a college internship. We’re nuts for presidential history. In Sumter County is the town of Plains, home of our thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter. We arrived in Americus, the county seat, late one afternoon and visited Plains the next day.

I was unprepared for how small Plains and Sumter County are. Or how impoverished. According to Nationmaster.com, the average household median income is $30,904, compared to $49,386 here in Clermont County, Ohio. The disparity in the median family income is even greater: $35,379 in Sumter County and $57,032 here. The numbers quantify what we saw with our own eyes.

Plains itself is neat, simple, tiny, and while not boarded-up poor, not overly prosperous either.

Outside of town is Carter’s boyhood home and farm. The house is a small structure. Sometime during his childhood, Jimmy’s father had indoor plumbing installed. The bathroom included a handmade shower: a pipe fitted with two elbows that ran up from the tub and spewed water into a bucket that hung on the pipe. Into the bottom of the bucket Earl Carter pounded a set of nail holes that created the shower as the water drained out.

I marveled that a president had come from such a place, just as I have at the birthplaces or boyhood homes of other chief executives.

But I also marveled that a man from a poor, segregated community became such a fierce advocate of human rights, winning a Nobel Peace Prize, and who as a southern governor, would boldly declare the end of segregation as a way of life.

Standing there on the Carter farm, I began to see a larger picture, though.

You see, Sumter County is also the home of Koinonia Farms, the Christian commune started in 1942 by pastor and writer Clarence Jordan as a place where blacks and whites would work and live together in peace. Jordan and the Koinonia Partners have been a beacon of reconciliation to many in the world for six decades.

Sumter County is also the home of Habitat for Humanity, the Christian movement started by Millard and Linda Fuller, that is building affordable housing for people in need around the world.

How is it possible that such good and notable things that honor God and give hope and help to millions can spring from a seemingly unpromising place?

Jesus once told a parable--a story--about a farmer indiscriminately scattering seeds around his farm. The seeds fell on all sorts of soil and most either failed to take root or quickly died. But some seeds fell on good soil and grew and thrived.

The seeds in Jesus’ story contained the good news of God’s deathless love made available to all who turn from sin and let Jesus be the Center of their lives. The good soil is anyone who lets Jesus into their lives and follows Him.

Even in its segregated past, there were people in Sumter County who were “good soil.” The seeds of God’s love and power entered their lives and like time bombs of goodness, exploded in their souls---in people like Jimmy Carter, Clarence Jordan, Millard and Linda Fuller, and those whose lives they touched. Those soul explosions in turn, helped them to positively impact Sumter County and the world beyond.

God can do wonderful things in our lives when we let Jesus be our Center, God and Boss. Ask God to help you be good soil for His plans and purposes. You don’t know what He might do through you!

The Obama effigy is a sad incident and will be sadder still, if not shocking, if it's learned that any residents of an area from which so much Christian good has come, rather than some outsider, were responsible for this shameful act.