While Senator Obama’s address on Tuesday has largely been received as a call to national dialogue about race, the 37-minute speech also revealed much about his religious and spiritual views. In it, Obama clearly invokes core Christian principles and beliefs, from original sin to God’s grace. “Perfection” was his refrain – he invoked the word nine times – yet he did not use it to describe a teleological achievement, but rather a continuous mission of going on to perfection.
This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.
[emphasis added]
Salvation, in this view, is an ongoing process, not an outcome; a constant exercise of choice rather than a final destination. Known as “Christian perfectionism,” this idea is a cornerstone to the theology of John Wesley, a leader of the Methodist movement. Interestingly, the most powerful Methodist today – George W. Bush – appears to profess a very different view of perfection, one that involves accomplishing specific goals based on knowledge about God’s plan for the world:
The cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind. The momentum of freedom in our world is unmistakable–and it is not carried forward by our power alone. We can trust in that greater power who guides the unfolding of the years. And in all that is to come, we can know that His purposes are just and true.
Bush professses a theology of certainty: God’s will can be known — indeed, it has been revealed to us — and our task on earth is to realize it. By contrast, Obama offers a theology grounded in a process, not an outcome: to work out salvation with fear and trembling.
Obama’s professed beliefs puts him at odds not only with President Bush, but his own pastor. As he states emphatically, “The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is… that he spoke as if our society was static.” Christian perfectionism, by contrast, sees imperfection as God’s challenge rather than fatalist destiny.
Some pundits and bloggers continue to ask why Sen. Obama has stood by a pastor with whom he disagrees so vehemently. There is, of course, a first-pass answer in the speech itself: “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother” — uncomfortably close, perhaps, to the reality of Hillary standing by Bill. Yet Obama makes clear that he is not just standing by an old mentor and father-figure, but an entire community: black Americans. “These people are a part of me,” he says of the American black community, a locution that implies both identity and yet also separation – acknowleding that Obama had come to the church as an outsider and made a conscious decision to stay and belong there.
This loyalty to a community that Obama acknowledges is both strong and imperfect invokes another theme related to perfection: reconciliation.
Our current notion of post-conflict reconciliation is largely informed by the work of Bishop Desmond Tutu in healing the wounds of South African apartheid. Today, there is a practice and a process of reconciliation that’s widely studied, refined, and applied across the world. Sen. Obama’s speech reflects two steps in this process: acknowledging of the merits of both sides and suggesting options for redress.
Bishop Tutu’s practice of worldly reconciliation was rooted in Christian belief in a divine one. And for Christians, Obama’s decision to devote himself to the imperfect community of black Americans may just echo another outsider who chose to stand with a broken people. For Christians believe that God sent his only son to become fully human in order to redeem the world; through Jesus, Christians find reconciliation with God.
Critics who perceive Barack Obama as “messianic” may be on to something, for as much as he asks America to join in racial reconciliation, he cannot help but embody that reconciliation in himself. Obama, of course, is not Jesus, and we will not achieve redemption – worldly or otherwise – by believing in him. If Americans are to heal our racial divide, we must commit ourselves to a process and not just a person. And yet this one person may just have the right message for the right time to begin that process. Perhaps for an issue as intractable as race in America, a leap of faith is all that is possible in an imperfect world.
Thank you. I wish that CNN, FOX MSNBC and so many other media outlets would post this thought provoking work on their sites. It is too important to not be read by many.
Again, Thank you
Deanna
A very thoughtful assessment of Senator Obama’s speech outlining his spiritual beliefs. As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict for 33 years (yes, I still go to meetings) I can identify with the spiritual process of having “insight into” as well as “grace” regarding imperfection; recognizing it in myself and others, always telling us we are not God.
Wonderful analysis of Obama’s approach to salvation – his humility is a refreshing change from the leadership we suffer today.
Thank you.
How do you come to the statement that Obama is working out salvation through the process of perfecting the American race experience? I did not hear that in his Tuesday race speech, as excellent as it was. Working toward perfecting the American experience is a concept separate from the work of Salvation through Christ. Christ does the work of Salvation our response is how we love each other. I think Obama gave us a very clear idea of how we are to proceed with reconciling race relations. Messianic he is not but a Christian, living his faith in the Messiah, just as we have faith in the same Messiah. We need to keep him in our prayers for him to continue to draw strength in Christ, leaning not on his own understanding.
As wonderful a leader as he appears to becoming, we need to keep in mind that no one individual, no matter how great a leader, is human needing the same grace & forgiveness for our imperfections from the one whose Resurrection and complete perfection we celebrate this Easter.
I love this analysis.
Thank you so much.
You have uplifted my spirits today.
I agree this needs to be spread far and wide.
This is a post that Christians can understand.
This is truly the most important blog I have read on this topic and I have read at least 50 or more over the past week.
You have said in words, more eloquently than I, what I have been thinking since reading Obama’s speech a few days ago. Thank you.
Bravo.
A cogent and concise essay.
It’s simplified a very complicated set of issues without being trite.
Process-orientation v. results-orientation.
I fall squarely in the first category: the best we can do is try to perfect ourselves and in the process inspire others to do the same.
I personally find the Methodist model as you’ve articulated it to be idolatrous (how can we be so certain of God’s plan?) and hubristic (presuming we know that plan, how can we execute it without at the same time unleashing a pandora’s box of unintended consequences?).
Not to say we should be paralyzed by doubt and timidity, of course, but it’s important to exercise discretion and above all, to admit we got it wrong and be prepared to rectify the situation.
God help us all.
All that I have read here seems to be at the base, a focus upon the activity of the person to generate some sort of “righteousness” in the works accomplished by that person to add to or suppliment the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ as an intergrel part of the Eternal Salvation of of the individual. Am I mistaken in seeing this as an issue or if not, can someone help me understand what this “perfectionism” is all about?
Your analysis is very relevant.
I just wanted to notice that in the script of the speech it is written : “the fact is that the comments that have been made in the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflects the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really work through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect”.
But Obama (15:37) makes a lapsus. He says : “(..) a part of our union that we have yet to make perfect”.
See the difference ?
So it may not so obvious, as it sounds, to refer to christian perfection, sometimes 🙂
That was just a philosophical remark.
Pascal – Philosopher
Working on a PhD “S. Cavell : politics of perfectionism”