Who's Prompting the Teleprompter?
Article by Peter Jones
Sep 1, 2009

Public life is no longer "politics as usual." At the 1992 <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />Clinton inauguration journalists hailed the "birth of Religious Left." By 2009, inauguration ceremonies included blessings from a gay bishop; the Religious Left had clearly matured! "We are God's partners in matters of life and death," says President Obama about healthcare, while accusing his critics of "bearing false witness." Has church/state separation been repealed? If politics can invoke religion, then religion has a right to critique politics.
The non-religious Left was a radical expression of atheistic socialism/Marxism. The religious Left joins God and Marx in a new upbeat vision of the future. "Religious socialism" seems to have found an active, astute proponent in President Obama. 

Socialism

Some believe the President is offering practical adjustments to an unwieldy health care system. Others argue that the rush to reform and the introduction of policies that, according to George Will, "promiscuously blur the distinction between public and private sectors," are only a first installment of a socialist reinterpretation of the Founding Documents. They see central planning by bureaucrats as the way of the future. Wills asks, "Will [the administration] countenance a retreat of the state?...Do they have an aspiration that they dare not speak?"
Candidate Obama described the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties" that does not define what the government can do positively. In 2008 Michelle Obama clarified her husband's notions of "hope" and "change": "We're going to have to change our traditions [including the Founding Documents?--mine] and our history… the world as it is just won't do." Enter the present administration, described by some as "radical egalitarians…convinced of their utopian ends." President Obama's 2008 political call sounds like a religious call: "I am confident we can create a kingdom right here on earth." Alas, despite the laudable hopes of its engineers, centrally-planned utopias, in the hands of fallible, sinful bureaucrats, have always, and always will, end in injustice. That's why the Constitution "negatively" establishes checks and balances.
Specifically, it would seem that Barack Obama's principles of community organization, influenced by the thinking of the communist theorist, Saul Alinski, inspired him to "organize" the leaderless masses of South Side Chicago to force those in power to spread the wealth around.

Religion

In Chicago, Obama's attempt to gather an alliance of churches was hampered by his lack of church attendance. He thus joined Trinity United Methodist Church and sat for twenty years under Jeremiah Wright's version of "liberation theology"-a "progressive Christian" blending of Christianity and Marxism that reduces everything to social justice. Religious Leftist, Mikhail Gorbachev, makes the agenda very clear. He calls for a new paradigm, blending "democracy" (he means global socialism) and religion (a blend of Buddhism and Christianity).
Just how extreme will be this coming "kingdom" can be measured by those already appointed to its service. Here is a sampling:

• Cass Sunstein ("Regulation Czar"), who thinks animals should have the right to sue in court;
• Mark Lloyd (Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission), who believes the Government should control all media;
• Steven Chu (Secretary of Energy), a strong believer in the anthropogenic causes of global warming;
• Janet Napolitano (Head of the Department of Homeland Security), who calls pro-life advocates terrorists;
• Harold Koh (State Department voice in foreign policy), who is a globalist/trans-nationalist;
• Sonya Sotomayor (Supreme Court Justice), who has "never thought about" whether the unborn fetus has any rights;
• Hilda Solis (Secretary of Labor), a union organizer who supports the suppression of secret ballot for workers;
• Kathleen Sebelius (Secretary of Health and Human Services), active supporter of partial-birth abortionist, George Tiller;
• Kevin Jennings (Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education and founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), who favors teaching homosexual techniques to children;
• Van Jones (White House environmental adviser), a self-described "rowdy black nationalist," and "communist," founder of STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, recently resigned);
• Carol M. Browner, global warming czar, was a member of Socialist International and on its Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.
• Barack Obama (President of the USA), with the most radical voting record in the history of the Senate, promotes the Freedom of Choice Act, a pro-abortion legislation that goes far beyond Roe v. Wade, and who promises gays all that they demand, dismissing their opponents for using "worn arguments and old attitudes."

Since the 1990s, the Religious Left has grown and matured. For Christians, to maintain our function as "salt" and "light" in this new politico-religious, Christless world, we must submit to the magistrate but also discern the influence of the old religion of the worship of creation, and witness publicly to the worship of the Creator, who, in Jesus, is the only Savior. For Christians, our Lord is not the Czars; our Lord is Jesus.