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Weak & Foolish Blog Blog by robsargeant

Welcome to the Weak & Foolish Blog, hosted by Rob Sargeant, author of children's action/adventure book: LOST ARK FOUND, and literary fiction: A SILENT VIOLENCE.

Posts: 17 | Created on October 21, 2007 |  

The Faith of Barack Obama, Review

By robsargeant in Weak & Foolish Blog on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 6:42 PM  
Tags: review the faith of barack obama | 2 Comments Post a Comment

I'm reviewing a free copy of Stephen Mansfield's new book, The Faith of Barack Obama, offered by Mike Hyatt, the CEO of Thomas Nelson. I'm a regular reader of his blog, and happened to respond quickly enough to qualify the day he offered free books to the first 100 bloggers who were interested in doing a review. A day later they notified me that the book was in the mail, and they sent me a PDF file containing the first two chapters so I could get started.

Mansfield writes with a sense of compassion, telling of Barak Obama's spiritual journey through life so far. He elaborates on how during Obama's childhood, which was spent mostly fatherless, he had a mix of atheist and Islamic influences as he moved between Hawaii and Indonesia. Mansfield touches on Barack's Islamic heritage and interestingly notes that Obama can't be considered an apostate from the religion now because he was too young while in Indonesia to be considered a true convert to Islam. Barack later studied at the esteemed Punahau School in Honolulu, where he completed high-school, wrestling with his self-image like most teenagers facing peer pressure do during these years. After completing post-secondary school education in New York, Obama ended up in south Chicago, heavily involved with social work. It was here, in the mid-eighties, that he became a member of Trinity United Church of Christ after meeting the outspoken and larger than life, Jeremiah Wright.
I wondered, as I read, why Barak was motivated to belong to this community of African-Americans on the south side of Chicago. Maybe in Wright, the senior pastor of the church, he found the father figure that he’d lacked for decades. Wright’s influence on Barak’s life cannot be denied (Obama’s book, the Audacity of Hope, was titled after one of his sermons). I'm only two chapters into the manuscript now. Soon I'll have the book in hand so I can see if the author develops this father/son relationship further.
Comments 

I agree that Rev Wright has had great influence over the young Obama.

Thursday, August 14, 2008 9:00 AM

This could be an area of concern for Christians who believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God, because Jeremiah Wright's church has some very liberal views.

Friday, August 15, 2008 6:04 PM

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