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God Be Praised - Barack Obama
Born in 1918, not far removed from the occasion when President Theodore Roosevelt entertained Booker T. Washington at lunch in the White House, my elders talked with great feeling about that honor. Now a person of their color is scheduled to eat, sleep and live in that same White House.
What an apparently providential confluence of circumstances brought this to pass: the long, often violent night of a peoples sojourn in this land and their refusal to let hope die, a political disaster of eight years standing, an apparently endless war in a strange, distant land, the near collapse of a great nation's economy, the candidacy of one whose years emphasize his mortality joined to a running mate of dubious credentials, the dim awareness of American people that the idea of this nation is not yet fleshed out, the collapse of a wealthy well-trained opponent due to marital indiscretion, and the appearance on the public scene of a figure of becomingly mixed parentage with impeccable academic credentials joined to a mystically compelling personality and with a mate of charm and culture. THEREFORE, God be praised, Barack Obama. Let all see the hand of the God of history at his work in this matter.
By
Gardner Calvin Taylor
|
November 11, 2008; 6:45 AM ET
| Category:
Religion & Politics
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Posted by: KeithJM | November 10, 2008 1:49 PM
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If McCain won, another set of Baptists would saying the same thing -- Let all see the hand of God at work. Doesn't this ever feel silly?
I'm a huge fan of Obama. I voted for him in the primary and the general election. There was some luck involved in Obama's election (as there is in every election), but don't play down his extraordinary achievement. The idea that we must assume God stepped in because this extraordinary man with all of the attributes you described was elected president assumes that the system is racist -- isn't it possible that he was elected because the majority of the people saw that he was the right person for the job, regardless of his race? Can't we just celebrate that? In a way, isn't that a bigger deal for the future of the country than the idea that God tricked racists into voting for a man they didn't want to be president?