Book Reviews
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed.” Francis Bacon (d. 1626)
The Faith of Barack Obama
Stephan Mansfield
Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2008, $20.
Reviewed by Darold Morgan,
Richardson, TX
What we have in Mansfield’s excellent, well-written book on Barack Obama’s spiritual pilgrimage are pages of current and relevant information all American citizens need to know. It was published before Obams’s election as the first African-American president of the United States.
Regardless of one’s political identity, this is an important book, brimming with incisive insights about an extraordinary man. It should be widely circulated, not only because of its subject matter, but also because of the insidious rumors still hovering about Obama’s religious background, colored by a very unusual set of family influences.
The new president appears in these pages as a man who has chosen positively to be identified as a Christian through a genuine experience of commitment to Christ. . . a choice made in his mature years. Many come to this decision in childhood through parental influence or church guidance. Obama’s mother was a secularist and atheist. His father was a Muslim from Kenya. They met at the University of Hawaii.
Influential in his early years was his step-father, an Indonesian with “a broad, syncretistic form of Islam.” Obama’s childhood was not a normal one by any stretch of imagination. Born in Hawaii, transported in his early years to Indonesia, and then back to Hawaii with foundational guidance from his maternal Caucasian grandparents, these were all seminal influences in his teen years. The family was not active in church, but they did share a Methodist heritage. Obama’s Christian commitment came after college, graduate school, marriage and parenthood, assisted by a creative, controversial pastor on Chicago’s turbulent south side.
During the almost classic political campaign of 2008 as Obama sought the office of the president, there was an inordinate amount of virulent and misinformed e-mails about Obama’s Islamic background, especially from his Indonesian years. This book is worth reading because of its analysis of those distant years and experiences. A major question is raised and not answered about Obama, who evidently leaves Islam, even as a child, for a Christian commitment. No American president has ever had such a background.
Mansfield also provides serious and provocative research about Obams’s now former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. One concludes quickly that he is both fair and objective about this serious controversy which resulted in Obama leaving this church in Chicago. The sad circumstances led to one of Obama’s most quoted speeches about religion and its personal importance, an action that to some degree closed this painful and dramatic chapter.
Another plus of the book is the surprise chapter, “Four Faces of Faith.” Here in contrast to Obama’s pilgrimage is a truly fascinating set of contrasts from his challengers. The author categorizes the faces of faith of three major politicians who are Christians: John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush. Unity and diversity here make for fascinating reading and comparisons.
This volume will not change opinions held deeply by Obama’s detractors, but it will give some helpful insights to those who genuinely want to know more about this new president of the United States.
