Believers wonder: Where is the old Obama?

By Lisa Miller,
WashPost
Published: August 11

Obama was elected because a majority of people felt he lifted them up. He gave Americans a sense of interdependence, and he reminded us of the gifts and responsibilities that come with a shared future. With that problematic middle name, Hussein, and his unpopular former pastor, Obama’s campaign was religiously fraught. Nevertheless, he managed to frame his belief in a common humanity in the language of faith.

On the trail, his favorite biblical paraphrase came from Genesis: “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.” Unlike some of his tea party foes, Obama rejected the idea of American exceptionalism — that God has special plans for this country. Like his hero, moral theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, he loathed any absolutist claims to know what God wants. “I believe that [God’s plans] are a little too mysterious for me to grasp,” he said in 2007, “and so what I try to do is, as best I can, be an instrument of his will.”

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