Here’s my take on it, His father was born a Muslim but became an atheist. His mother was an atheist from a very young age. His stepfather, a guy named Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia, was also born a Muslim but became an atheist.
So he [Obama] was raised by three atheists. I don’t believe that he has an ounce of religious faith of any kind in his upbringing.
Through his father and a series of mentors, he developed a passionate hostility to the United States of America as being a rogue nation. One of the reasons that Obama is sympathetic to these Muslim rebel movements is he thinks we’re oppressing them. We’re occupying Iraq, and we’re occupying Afghanistan kind of like the British occupied India and Kenya. And so, the guys we’re fighting, they’re heroes. They’re like Gandhi. They’re like Mandela. They’re like his [Obama’s] dad. They’re freedom fighters.
….
He worked in Chicago with church groups. These were left-wing church groups, but they were fighting for social justice. So every time Obama would meet the priests and the pastors in his network, they’d say to him, ‘Hey Obama, where do you go to church?
So one of his buddies told Obama, ‘Listen, you kind of have to pretend to go. Even if you don’t go, go find a church. Go check out this Trinity Church in Chicago.’ Now, by amazing coincidence, when Obama went to that church, he found a kind of a third-world guy, by which I mean Rev. Wright would wear African dashikis.
And really [Rev. Wright’s] main theme was not civil rights. It was foreign policy. [It was] how America is the evil nation in the world. We bombed Grenada. We bombed Libya. We are the ones who used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and at the end of it, of course, [expletive] America!’
And Obama was like, ‘Right on. That’s what my dad believed.’
I’d call it third-world liberation theology. That’s his doctrine. It’s not traditional Christianity.
Third-world liberation theology makes Jesus into a Marxist guerrilla revolutionary. And He’s fighting against the ‘evil empire.’ The liberation theologians of today are fighting the ‘evil empire,’ and who’s the ‘evil empire?’ The United States.
— Dinesh D’Sousa, Charisma News, Dinesh D’Souza Reveals Obama’s Shocking Religious and Political Beliefs, April 1, 2022
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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“Third world liberation theology” sounds like some sort of white supremacist dogwhistle to me.
Obstacle—It is.
Trump pardoned D’Souza. In my book, that taints him. He used “straw donors” to get around campaign laws.
Oh, and as Trump launched his 2016 campaign, D’Souza released “2016: Obama’s America,” which rehashed all of the false narratives and conspiracy theories about Obama and “the libs.” It is to liberalism (at least, the way folks like D’Souza portray it) as “Reefer Madness” is to marijuana.
Dang. D’Souza just can’t quit Obama, can he?
Ragging on Obama makes money for him.
Look, Joe Biden is boring. He’s White, his personality is kinda boring, he’s careful, his background is very conventionally Mainland US. Ragging on the current Democrat in the White House just doesn’t get the racist members of the 101st Keyboard Regiment all that excited. Not that they don’t hate him, but he’s kind of an uninteresting person to hate. Obama is an interesting character, he’s Black or mixed race, choose whichever one upsets a given racist jerk more. He isn’t the son of a long line of well-established White Americans, he has a mildly interesting background that can be exploited to drag in all kinds of conspiracy crap, and so on. Plus, he didn’t leave office to return to his peanut farm, he still has leverage with certain voters and works to support liberal causes by rallying those voters. (Which is not intended as a slap at Carter, who himself seems like a good guy who maximizes the good he can do in more apolitical ways. But ragging on a guy who’s helping build houses for poor people, or helping foreign elections be fair like the ones in the US are supposed to be, just has no traction.)
I guess I’m just cynical.
Oh, please. Dinesh D’Sousa knows about as much about Barack Obama’s religious life as I do. Maybe less. D’Sousa seems to have a vivid imagination, because he made up just about everything he said there. Since I can’t read minds, I have no idea whether Mr. Obama is a Christian, an agnostic, an atheist, or something else. I don’t think it matters. Barack Obama’s presidency left the country a better place than it was when he started. I doubt very much that whatever D’Sousa’s lifework is will end with people feeling the same way.
“It’s not traditional Christianity.”
aka “It’s not my version of this cult.”