You Should Probably Read The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
A Review of The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Abridged) by Barack Obama
A Halt in Normalcy
Due to the halt in normalcy that the Nashville Flood of 2010 brought these last two days, I listened to the audiobook version of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. It was only upon the completion of the book that I realized it was a much-loathed abridged version. However, after rescanning audible.com, I realized that there was not an unabridged version of the audiobook available, and that somehow made me feel less cheated. I also discovered upon further investigation, that only one chapter, “The World Beyond Our Borders,” seems to have been left out of the abridged version. So I feel even less cheated, or at the very least, more secure in my assumption that I missed little of the content in full version of the book. Besides, the audiobook version is enhanced over the written form because Obama performs the narration himself. So I’m happy.
As the title of my review indicates, I believe you should probably read this book. And I believe that you should probably read The Audacity of Hope for at least three reasons: understanding, respect, and challenge. Reason number one: understanding. Barack Obama is our president, and the power and authority that he possesses greatly influence the lives of all Americans; we should understand his thinking if we can. And I might add, a book seems to allow him to explain himself in a more well-rounded way than a speech or a debate. Reason number two: respect. Despite your opinion about the politics of Barack Obama, he is a real person just like you and me. This book will, I believe, help readers to more readily respect him as a person, even if they disagree with his brand of politics. I grew up hating Bill Clinton, in fact villainizing him, because he was a Democrat. That’s a poor reason to despise someone. We should try to separate personal attacks from political opinions when possible. That is what I would appreciate if I were in the fishbowl-public-eye like President Obama. Reason number three: challenge. This text, whether you agree, disagree, or partially agree with its opinions, will cause you to think deeply about political issues in America. Obama’s candor makes The Audacity of Hope easy to read, but it is still challenging to think about. Obama will make your political opinions sharper. For all these reasons and more, I say you should read The Audacity of Hope.
Review
I’m honestly not really sure that I have the patience or the time to fully review all of the contents of this book. So like usual, I’m going to highlight a few topics that have me arguing with myself, and I hope to involve you in that discussion.
Complexity
Much of Obama’s dream about how politics should be approached in America are quite admirable. He talks about “different politics,” politics that are less partisan, less composed of concrete idealism, and more understanding of each side’s point of view. To quote him, “A government that truly represents these Americans, that truly serves these Americans, will require a different kind of politics. That politics will need to reflect our lives as they are actually lived. It won’t be prepackaged, ready to pull off the shelf. It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions, and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past” (00:32:00). The description of “prepackaged politics” is what especially rings true to me in this quote. I have ideas, especially regarding moral issues such as abortion (i.e. murder), upon which I will not bend. There is no grey on this issue. Murder is wrong; abortion is wrong. However, despite my strong opinion on this issue, I agree with Obama that much of the debate within politics is less certain. It is less black and white and more complex. And I appreciate that Obama realizes this complexity.
Postmodernity
I posted a link to an article about a year ago that highlighted the idea that Barack Obama might be our first postmodern president. I agree with many of the thoughts expressed in that article, and after listening to The Audacity of Hope, I’m more convinced that Obama sees truth through a very postmodern lens. For instance, he highlights the different manners in which people interpret the Constitution. As he explains, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia argues that the Constitution has a single meaning, and only a single meaning, and that it should be interpreted based on the original intent of the authors. While other Supreme Court justices, such as Breyer, argue that the Constitution is a “living document,” and that the founders taught us mainly “how to think, not what to think.” This second view, the one that Obama takes, is extremely postmodern. It maximizes the reader’s role in determining the meaning of the document, and minimizes the writer’s role in determining the meaning of the document. This postmodernistic interpretational method is essentially relativism in disguise. To quote Obama, we should view our democracy “not as a house to be built, but a conversation to be had” (1:57:00). While this sounds amazing, and quite Rob Bell-esque I might add, it’s anti-logical and self-defeating. If everything has multiple meanings, then how can anything have actual meaning? It sucks when what you said is reinterpreted to mean something totally different from what you originally meant, and then you are denigrated for saying something that is quite the opposite of what you actually said, but were determined to have said by others who reinterpreted your words. Even Obama bemoans an article that he wrote for Time Magazine that was later taken out of context and reinterpreted by Peggy Noonan. And yet Obama’s own precepts of epistemology preclude this as a valid complaint if everything has various meanings.
Additionally, Obama is very sensitive in attempting to understand the individual views of different people upon every issue. He sees, (and I’m not attempting to put words in his mouth here), the good and the bad of each person’s opinion. While there is nothing wrong with empathizing in this way, it sometimes ignores the larger issue of actual truth, actual facts. If there is a right and a wrong, then the question is not about my opinion, or your opinion, but about the facts of the situation. Personally speaking, I want to strike a balance between recognizing truth and understanding different viewpoints. Postmodernity can’t strike this balance. As I stated above, not everything in politics is tidy, and I like that Obama recognizes this fact, but I think that many times he may ignore the actual truth, in order to understand how someone else feels.
Faith
I appreciate much of what Barack Obama says about the intersection of faith and politics. He is right, I believe, when he says that, “Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers” (4:20:00). Personally speaking, it’s frustrating for me to hear the old chant of the religious right that “America is a Christian nation.” Do the chanters of such a statement even understand what they mean by “Christian nation?” I mean what is a Christian nation? Is it a nation composed of a majority of Christians? That’s not America. Is it a nation based on Christian principles? That’s only partially true of America. Is it a nation where the Bible is held by all to be the only standard of truth? That’s not true of America either. So I agree with Obama that we are not a Christian nation. In fact I recognize, as does Obama, that the phrase “separation of church and state,” is a good thing. It’s a principle that Baptists (my own upbringing) helped fight for hundreds of years ago. It’s a needed understanding of the intersection of faith and government, so that the beliefs of others, including my own, are not infringed upon by the government.
The hairy-ness of this separation clause comes in to play when we try to apply it to policy making. How do we make policies that allow religious liberty for everyone without somehow assenting to a common religious / faith-based view that trumps all others?
Obama sees the public sphere as one in which faith is included, but not used as the sole foundation for which to determine policy. As he explains, people of faith need to translate their moral arguments into universal arguments so that they can be discussed by everyone, even those who do not share your personal brand of faith. In this way faith is involved in our discussions, but those of differing faiths, or no faith at all, can still enter into the political discussion and argue on a level playing field. The idea being discussed has been reworded into non-faith language and is now accessible to everyone. This makes a certain amount of sense to me, but I’m not sure it can truly happen without assigning religion a secondary status and removing it from the conversation altogether (which is the very thing Obama is striving to avoid).
The logic of Obama’s argument is this: I cannot expect another person, who disagrees with me that the Bible is true, to accept my opinion about war if I base my argument solely on my biblical arguments. I need to translate the principles of my argument into non-Christian terms, so that others can then enter into the discussion about the fitness of my argument. In this way I have argued for the truth of the Bible, without using the Bible as my source of morality.
My problem with this stance is that it forces a false dichotomy between faith and science. Obama argues that faith and science play by different sets of rules. Faith is unprovable, while science, he argues, is provable. But this is simply not true. Evolution is theory. Gravity is a theory. Electricity is a theory. These theories seem to explain truth, but they are not completely provable. Science is based on set of presuppositions. Without science’s presuppositions, it cannot operate. Religion too is based on a set of presuppositions. Obama wants to take all religious language and translate it into scientific / logical language when it is used in the public sphere because he “believes” science to be provable and religion to be unprovable. In this way he reveals that his trust is actually placed more in science than it is in religion. Despite his attempts to accept both as equally valid, he places science / logic (with its own unprovable presuppositions) as his framework for truth, and in turn places religion in a secondary place of importance. His faith becomes more of a fairytale faith. Unprovable. What’s good for you is good for you. And what’s good for me is good for me. But we shouldn’t try to prove each other right or wrong. We can’t because this is all just “religious talk.”
Since everyone is going to disagree on the presuppositions that are the most tenable in the public sphere, what is the foundation upon which we should decide policy? My argument is that it has to be the Constitution. The Constitution, imperfect as it is, must be the foundation of our policy decisions. Anything beyond what the Constitution describes must be written into law based upon the opinions of the people. The will of the people will determine new policy, and the people are free to use religious or non-religious reasoning in their argumentation for or against policy. This seems to make sense to me. I could be off my rocker, but it seems to make sense. Ultimately, this will mean that our government is faulted because its policies will often be anti-biblical. But isn’t this already the case? Obama’s assumptions about truth necessarily give religion a secondary status within public debate, and I believe assigning religion that secondary standing cuts through the heart of its power.
I Could Go On
I could go on with further ideas about Barack Obama and his book The Audacity of Hope. I still haven’t touched his ideas about the economy, healthcare, or race. And he has some good ideas about these subjects. But it’s now 3:00AM in the morning and “I must be lonely,” and I’m making pop song references, so I’m going to stop. If you are so inclined to read this book, I’d appreciate your personal feedback. My opinions may be idiotic, and your musings (provided they are kindly expressed) may help me to think less idiotically. At the very least, I’m sure my thinking could use some refining that your thinking might encourage.
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No commentsBook Review: The World’s Last Night and Other Essays by C. S. Lewis
Book Info
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays is a small, 113 page book, containing seven essays by C. S. Lewis covering a variety of topics. The seven essays are: “The Efficacy of Prayer,” “On Obstinacy in Belief,” “Lilies that Fester,” “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” “Good Work and Good Works,” “Religion and Rocketry,” and “The World’s Last Night.” These essays were originally published separately in a variety of publications between 1952 and 1959. I believe the current collected form of the essays was first published in 1959.
Efficacy of Prayer
In this essay, Lewis marvels at both the reality and unprovable-ness of prayer. He experientially knows that prayer works, and yet he is quite aware that there is no empirical way to prove that it works. Further, as the title of the essay makes clear, Lewis questions the purpose of prayer. In part his conclusion is that, “In it God shows Himself to us. That He answers prayer is a corollary – not necessarily the most important one – from that revelation” (8). Lewis ends the essay by contemplating the way in which petitionary prayer works. Good essay!
On Obstinacy in Belief
Lewis begins this essay by pointing out that it is often stated that, science demands evidence for belief, while religion demands belief without evidence. Accordingly, science and religion often conflict with each other in that they value opposite things: science values facts, religion values faith. However, as Lewis makes clear, this is an oversimplification of the situation, for science often leads men to conclusions that have not been implicitly proved, and faith in God is not entirely absent from proof. Throughout the rest of the essay, Lewis explains that the gulf between science and faith is not nearly as wide as many make it seem. Good essay!
Lilies That Fester
Lilies that Fester is probably my favorite essay in this collection. Lewis essentially predicts the movement of political correctness at least 20 years before it became a reality. He laments the day that men would quit thinking for themselves, one where only popular opinion will be regarded as “good thought.” Listen as he describes what this would look like, “Every boy or girl that is born is presented with the choice: ‘Read the poets, whom we, the cultured, approve, and say the sort of things we say about them, or be a prole’” (46). Lewis’ concern is that this sort of “political correctness” would invade the arena of Christianity and wreak havoc. Lewis is squarely on the side of freedom both in the arena of thought and in the arena of life. My other favorite quote from this essay (probably because I lean libertarian politically) is, “All political power is at best a necessary evil: but it is least evil when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages it to meddle with our private lives” (40). Great!
Screwtape Proposes a Toast
This is an essay that acts as a sort of prequel to the Screwtape Letters – a fictional book of letters from one demon to another regarding temptation. The whole of this essay is a fictional speech from Screwtape, a demon, to his other demons regarding methods of temptation. I’ve previously reviewed the Screwtape Letters, and am honestly not that big a fan of the book or the essay. Meh!
Good Work and Good Works
Probably my second favorite essay of this collection. Lewis focuses on the necessity for Christians not simply to do good works (religious works), but also to spend their time doing good work (doing work well). As he says, “When our Lord provided a poor wedding party with an extra glass of wine all round, he was doing good works. But also good work; it was wine really worth drinking” (71). Lewis spends some time explaining how modern culture is filled with less than good work. Accordingly, many of us manufacture or create products that we must first convince consumers they need. Conversely good work can be defined as: creating, or doing something, that we would do even if no monetary compensation were involved. He concludes that, “We shall try, if we get the chance, to earn a living by doing well what would be worth doing even if we had not a living to earn” (78). Great!
Religion and Rocketry
In this essay, Lewis contemplates how the Christian religion would be effected by the discovery of life on other planets. Would the aliens be fallen like mankind? Would they need the death of Christ? Would they be rational creatures like humans? Capable of choice? This is fun essay that shows the vastness of Lewis’ creativity, but – I suggest – probably seemed more relevant when it was written in the 1950′s. Creative and Fun!
The World’s Last Night
In The World’s Last Night, Lewis argues for the centrality of the teaching of the return of Christ in the bible. He observes that in previous generations an exaggerated view of the return of Jesus, by men like Albert Schweitzer, has led to an under-emphasized and embarrassed response from many of Lewis’ contemporaries regarding the teaching. And this, according to Lewis, is a mistake. Jesus teaching on His return is a vital part of His teaching. Christ cannot be understood apart from it. Lewis goes on to suggest how the message of the second coming of Jesus should effect us personally. I love that he comes to unique conclusions about our response to Jesus’ teaching about the second coming. His conclusion is that the expectation of God’s coming judgment (which is part of the second coming) should not lead to crisis-type actions, but should steady us, and help us to make wise decisions in each situation. Good essay!
Overall
This is a really fun and thought-provoking book to read. I’m discovering more and more that I really do like the writings of C. S. Lewis. I, however, prefer a lot of his more offbeat writings, rather than his extremely well-known works.
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No commentsBook Review: Atheism Remix by Al Mohler
I picked up a used copy of Atheism Remix for $5 at McKay’s Used Books, CD’s, Movies, and More in Nashville. If you’ve never been to McKay’s, you’re missing out. There is an incredible amount of good media at McKay’s, and inventory changes often. Anyway, I’d been eyeing Atheism Remix for a while now in Lifeway, so when I saw I cheap used copy, I jumped on it.
This is a brief (108 pages), but effective book about the “New Atheism” movement. New Atheism is different from older forms of atheism in its boldness, its specific animosity towards Christians and the God of the Bible (rather than just the conception of God in general), and in its cultural reach. According to Mohler, New Atheism is “not just a reassertion of atheism, it is a movement that represents a far greater public challenge to Christianity than that posed by the atheistic movements of previous times” (12). New Atheism is advocated most prominently by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. In just four chapters, Mohler spells out a description of New Atheism, its adherents, and how it is being challenged both effectively and ineffectively.
This book is culturally relevant and should be read widely. The books of Dawkins and others are too popular for Christians to be completely unaware of the bombs being lobbed at Christianity by the adherents of New Atheism. You should read this book. If the effects of New Atheism don’t seem to be effecting you, they will effect your kids and the people you’re surrounded by. I think believers everywhere should read Atheism Remix, especially because its brevity makes it so approachable.
If I have any qualms about this book, it is that Mohler offers little in the way of “What now?” I don’t want to misrepresent Mohler as a deconstructionist, but I did personally long for a little more construction at the end of the book. I suspect that he would argue that this was not his purpose in writing, which is perfectly acceptable, it just left me wanting a little more. None-the-less, I learned a ton in the brief pages of this book and will encourage many to read it for themselves.
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No commentsTotal Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcey
My brother Andy recently read this book and wrote a review. I’m posting it here. The implications of this book are huge: I can’t wait to read it for myself.
Summary
In Total Truth Nancy Pearcey argues that western (American) Christians have been indoctrinated by secular culture, and by poor theological frameworks within the church, that have caused them to acquiesce into a bifurcated system of living and seeing the world, one in which there is a secular/sacred divide that keeps faith locked into the private sphere of life and out of the public sector (17). Pearcey states, “Many believers have absorbed the fact/value, public/private dichotomy, restricting their faith to the religious sphere while adopting whatever views are current in their professional or social circles” (33).
The problem with this is that it is a breakdown in theology and it highlights the insufficiency of many western Christians’ worldview. A right understanding of Christianity is, “that there is a biblical perspective on everything – not just on spiritual matters” (44). Thus, it is every Christian’s duty to think through and live out all of life from a Christian perspective. “Being a Christian means embarking on a lifelong process of growth in grace, both in our personal lives (sanctification) and in our vocation (cultural renewal)” (49). Christians cannot afford to accept the terms as they stand – leaving faith at home or in church on Sundays. Rather, the Christian’s entire life should be driven by a biblical worldview. This is the only real way to break free from the dichotomies that pervade our thinking and living. As Pearcey states, “The best way to drive out a bad worldview is by offering a good one (58); one that unifies both secular and sacred, public and private, within a single framework (65-66).
And it is the church’s duty to work to this end. The church is a training ground for cultivating people equipped to speak the gospel to the world (67). And by “gospel” Pearcey does not simply mean to share that all have sinned, that Christ died for sins, and that the proper response is repentance and faith. While it is inferred that she does believe this to be true and that it is the central message of the gospel, Pearcey argues that evangelism encompasses more than disseminating these basic truths. She states, “The task of evangelism starts with helping the nonbeliever face squarely the inconsistencies between his professed beliefs and his actual experience” (314). She goes on a few pages later, “In evangelism, our goal is to highlight the cognitive dissonance – to identify the points at which the nonbeliever’s worldview is contradicted by reality. Then we can show that only Christianity if fully consistent with the things we all know by experience” (319).
Moving on in her book Pearcey traces trajectories that led America into its dichotomized way of thinking. By looking from within the church and from the outside, she exposes several contributing factors to the secular/sacred split. First from within, Pearcey explains an overarching three-part theme that should guide the Christian worldview: Creation, Fall and Redemption. She summarizes, “All of creation was originally good; it cannot be divided into a good part (spiritual) and a bad part (material). Likewise, all of creation was affected by the Fall, and when time ends, all creation will be redeemed. Evil does not reside in some part of God’s good creation, but in our abuse of creation for sinful purposes” (86). This system is, “cosmic in scope, describing the great events that shape the nature of all created reality. We don’t need to accept an inner fragmentation between our faith and the rest of life. Instead we can be integrally related to God on all levels of our being” (95). Using this three-part grid as a tool of analysis, Pearcey then argues, “Throughout the history of the church, various groups have tended to seize upon one of these three elements, overemphasizing it to the detriment of the other two – producing a lopsided, unbalanced theology” (87).
One such failure was Aquinas’s overemphasis of Creation, leading him to a theology of “nature/grace dualism” (92). The outworking of this error was that the gospel was restricted to the “upper-story realm,” isolated from science, philosophy, law and politics (93). This gave leverage for the argument that later came to fruition during the Enlightenment; namely, that science and reason are religiously neutral. From this developed the notion that secularism and naturalism are objective, rational systems, binding on everyone, all the while biblical views are dismissed as biased, private opinions (94).
Once there was an accepted dichotomy between “nature” and “grace,” it was not hard to convince anyone that “science constitutes facts while morality is about values” (107). And with Darwins’s theory of natural selection came the ability to have a complete naturalistic worldview (106). The effect of Darwin’s theory has been pervasive. Pearcey states, “Virtually every part of society has been affected by the Darwinian worldview” (155).
What is insightful by Pearcey, though, is that the overwhelming acceptance of this dichotomy and of naturalism as the “lower-level” neutral sphere of truth is all based upon a philosophical foundation. The under girding of naturalism is the belief that matter is eternal and that the “system” is closed – neither of which can be proven on naturalist, scientific terms. Nonetheless, “once people have made that philosophical commitment, they can be persuaded by relatively minor evidence” (168). Furthermore, at this point, the “game” is biased, because once the two-tiered view of reality is accepted, the naturalists define the rules for access into the “lower realm.” Science (empiricism) is put forward as the only viable means for validating truth claims. Or conversely, we must now accept naturalism as a “central tenet” of science (169).
Moving on, Pearcey progresses to show how the dichotomy made its way into the development of our country’s politics and religion. Originally, in the colonial period, the dominant political philosophy was classical Christian republicanism. But with the development of thought – that cannot be divorced from the Enlightenment and Darwinism – came the new liberalism, which replaced the sentiment of self-sacrifice and the social structures of family and church with individualism. The focus was now on self-assertion and self-interest (280). Even evangelicalism1 with all of its positive affects in many ways worked to further the gap. The focus on individual conversion led to a doctrine of one-time emotional decisionalism, which ultimately contributed to the belief that Christianity is a “noncognitive, upper-story phenomenon” (272). Pearcey concludes, “Evangelicalism has largely given in to the two-story division that renders religion a matter of individual experience, with little or no cognitive content” (293).
Pearcey eventually reveals that the bifurcation of public/private has made it into the culture in which we are currently living. And therefore Christians have a great responsibility to fight against this way of thinking because it opposes truth. “What Christianity offers is a unified, integrated truth that stands in complete contrast to the two-level concept of truth in the secular world” (119). So what we must do is “evangelize”2 culture by exposing the flaws of other worldviews and then reveal that the Christian worldview offers a better alternative. And the alternative we offer is not simply for the private sector; we must, “find ways to make it clear that we are making claims about reality, not merely our subjective experience” (119).
Critical Evaluation
The premise set forth in this book has exposed an entire schema of thinking that I have used to interpret reality. While I have thought for some time that what Christians need is an entire worldview from which to operate, I have failed to see the pervasive nature of the public/private dichotomy in the western world and my acceptance of it many times. As a result, there are some questions I now have in relation to this new enlightenment. For one, how am I to understand the concept of “separation of church and state?” Originally, this clause was set forth to guard from the establishment of a church-state and to protect the right of individuals from forced religion. But as it is used now, it seems to “guard” the government from any religious influence (except naturalism), and this seems to be an extension of the public/private dichotomy. It would be fitting to trace how it is that we should specifically think through this concept of “separation.”
Another trajectory worth tracing is what the implications are for the education of Christian children. If evangelism is as broad as Pearcey defines it3, and if, “every subject area should be taught from a solidly biblical perspective so that students grasp the interconnections among the disciplines, discovering for themselves that all truth is God’s truth (129), then is public school even an option for Christian parents? And furthermore, where do we start as Christian parents in building a biblical worldview with our children?
Lastly, Pearcey calls for us to engage culture by exposing to individuals the inconsistencies in their worldview. But at what point do we share what Paul calls of first importance: that Christ died, that he was buried and that he rose again?4 And what’s the order in our attempt to put forward both the central gospel message, and an entire worldview that comes with it?
Review by Andy Adkison
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