Obama's Inaugural Preachers

So, Barack Obama's presidential election was accompanied by rituals of prayer by two leading figures in America's diverse Christian community, Bishop Gene Robinson (the only gay bishop of the Episcopalian church, the US wing of the Anglican church) and Pastor Rick Warren (a self identified Biblical Christian who 'planted' his own church, has earned millions of pounds in the process, and looks very unfavourably upon such 'liberal' causes as e.g. the practice of homosexuality).

In a nutshell, we have here the polar extremes not just of American Christianity but of the American psyche itself. Robinson, who defied church policy to accept his nomination as bishop represents the progressive wing of the Anglican communion whose ideals wait for no (wo)man - especially if s/he is an African....and Warren, the entrepreneurial demagogue preacher, replete with cosy conservative values and political contacts: the businessman Christian who speaks for 'everyman'.

I don't condemn either because they don't wash enough feet (though how many feet *do* they wash?) nor does it sadden me to see the unquestioned stranglehold of Christianity on American public ceremony...since good Christianity is good for everyone, this blog says. The problem is getting it on stage!

What *is* worrying, however, is what the whole affair brings to light: that the (milder) voice in the middle so rarely gets an outing in American culture - in politics or anywhere else. It's always the mavericks who get the attention. Perhaps I'm deluded if I think it's any different here.in the UK. Ahem, Boris Johnson and Stephen Fry. And of course our mavericks come as dripping with prejudice as does any American maverick. But really: couldn't a (single?) more unifying voice have been found for an historic occasion such as Obama's moment of accession? And would it have been so lamentable if that voice had happened not to be a maverick champion of some divisive cause? Maybe another time. Or maybe it's the case that voices of this kind are really rather hard to find. Can this really be so? O tempora, o mores.

Change, Barack Obama and Sam Cooke

Since this is a blog about 'History and Spirit', and since I have not written anything here for a while now, it makes sense on the day of Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential election to break my silence. Throughout the election, Obama made full use of the slogan of 'change' - deliberately, I think, evoking the language of one of the most searing songs of the prematurely deceased soul singer Sam Cooke: A Change is Gonna Come. Now that he's won the 'change', perhaps, has come. A 75% electoral turn-out ensured that the US elected its first black president. Mention, of course, should be made of John McCain - an honourable man and war-hero who would have made a far superior president to George W. Bush. But Obama was always going to win if the electorate showed up at the polls in force, and that is precisely what they did. Change, and the chance to elect an inspiring young leader with anti-war and left wing social policy inclinations, was always going to prove an attraction.

For now, the substance of the 'change' Obama has promised remains unseen. But his has been a message many have felt themselves capable of believing and it is to be hoped that he will not leave them feeling underwhelmed by what he manages to deliver. More, in short, needs to be done - both in the US and elsewhere - to spread the benefits of civilisation, medicine and technology to those who currently have no access to them. If Obama can take steps to achieve this - perhaps, for example, by confronting the barons who hold the US pharmaceutical companies in their grip - then the change he has promised will indeed correspond to the change which Sam Cooke predicted decades ago.