Monday, September 22, 2008

That's Just Ignorant

A Pew Research Center survey released a few days ago, quoted by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT, found that only half of Americans correctly know that Mr. Obama is a Christian. Meanwhile, 13 percent of registered voters say that he is a Muslim, while a rising share — now 16 percent — say they aren’t sure about his religion because they’ve heard “different things” about it. (Some fundamentalist Christians are now speculating that Obama may actually be the Antichrist of the Apocalypse.)

As someone who knows a little something about both Christianity and Islam (I've been studying the first for 40 years and preached something like 1,400 sermons, and I studied world religions under the great scholar of world religions Huston Smith in a Ph.D. program and read the Koran cover to cover), all I can say is, that's just ignorant.

The man is clearly a devout Christian, who can articulate his faith far better than his opponent. Don't I recall some scandal about his Christian pastor?

Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said something like 'It's a republic, if you can keep it.'? And isn't it a given that freedom requires a basically educated, responsible citizenry? I would say that we're in deep, deep trouble.

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