TIME Report, White House Reaction Raise More Questions About Obama's Church Hunt
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
TIME's Amy Sullivan is standing by her story about the first family giving up plans to join a Washington-area church in favor of worshiping at Camp David's Evergreen Chapel, despite a White House denial. But both Sullivan and the White House are hedging their bets.
In a statement yesterday, the White House implied that the TIME report was erroneous:
The President and First Family continue to look for a church home. They have enjoyed worshipping at Camp David and several other congregations over the months, and will choose a church at the time that is best for their family.
The White House didn't come flat out and say the story was wrong. It did, however, contradict the central assertion of Sullivan's report: that President Obama had given up his family's church search. The search, the White House says, goes on, and the Obamas still plan to choose a new church home. But by declining to deny Sullivan's report outright and by ambiguously pledging that the Obamas "will choose a church at the time that is best for their family," the White House is giving itself some wiggle room.
Sullivan, meanwhile, is standing by her story, arguing that "nothing in the [White House] statement contradicts my reporting." Huh? She reported that Obama was giving up his church search:
Now, in an unexpected move, Obama has told White House aides that instead of joining a congregation in Washington, he will follow in George W. Bush's footsteps and make his primary place of worship Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David.
It turns out that Sullivan—a friend of God & Country—is hedging her bet, too. In a follow-up post reacting to the White House statement, she tweaks her story, saying it's about Obama's decision to attend church services at Camp David's chapel for the time being. There's a big difference between treating Evergreen Chapel as his new spiritual home in Washington, as her initial post did, and considering it a spiritual way station, as her follow-up post does.
The bottom line is that we don't know how close the first family is to joining a new church.
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Reader Comments
Obama Church
How could Obama join any Church? What an odd Church it would have to be! His first act was to export the moral poverty of America to the developing world by allowing American aid to be used for abortion. He is a child killer - a morally depraved individual. You do not have to look far to see the fruits of Liberalism. Look in the abortion mills of America and Europe - as you read this some unfortunate helpless child of God is about to face the murderous attentions of the medical profession protected by perverted law and screamed on by the full furry of extreme feminism. How could any individual who approves and encourages this ever go to any Church. Obama is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.
Michael Arch
Religion reveals the man
Whether or not America is or was a Christian nation is irrelvant. What is truly revealing about a person's values or religion is the religious organisation he chooses to join.
So the church this President joins is very relevant for all global citizens concerned, especially those who have doubts about his previous church, his socialist inclinations and his current economic bail-out policies favouring the Wall Street elite.
If Obama was a Muslim, I would want to know which Muslim mosque he joins. If he is a Buddhist, I would want to know which sect he belongs to and if he is an agnostic/New Age, which agnostic/New Age group or leader is he following.
These matters reveal the heart of the man because religion goes into the roots of the human spirit crying out for truth. Even if religion is used as a fashion statement, we will be able to discern accordingly.
Obama's Church
The church the First Family chooses, if any, is their business and no one else's, since that's an intensely personal decision, but I hope he settles on one in his community.
If you read President Obama's first book, he exhaustively searched for the proper church in Chicago to match his life goals, and unfortunately settled on the one over which that wacko preacher presided. Hopefully, the president, God bless him, will have better luck this time, and the church that attracts him and his family will have wonderfully active members.
However, what drew him to that church was its program of hands-on service to the poor in the community, which meshes neatly with his own philosophy of community service.
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