BMORENEWS.com

(BALTIMORE - November 13, 2008) - The phenomenon of a Barak Obama presidency has not quite settled in. While excited, jubilant and hopeful as to what it might mean in terms of future dialogue, the world is in a flux as to how to process an African American at the helm of the world’s most powerful government, and Americans of all hues and backgrounds are also uncertain as to how to proceed.  Think about it. Americans are viewed as schizophrenic when it comes to the race issue – exit poll data clearly bears that out; and many believe that if it had not been for a catastrophic blending of the country’s economic free-fall, two war fronts and high gas prices, John McCain and Sarah Palin might well have been sitting in the White House come January.

Given Republican policies over the last eight years and the 20 years preceding the Clinton years, it is difficult to see why sane people would vote for another Republican presidency. After-all, their policies, packaged in the greed and avarice of their corporate bed-fellows, has led to the crippling of the world’s economic stability. And while Republicans screamed Socialism at President-Elect Barak Obama’s comment that we “need to spread the wealth” in reference to relieving the tax burden on 95-percent of USA taxpayers and placing more of it on the rich who pay little if any taxes, they winked, much like Palin does, when they gave a $700 Billion bailout to the very corporate CEO’s who created the problem. That’s like having an armed rapist offer you the choice of being raped with or without the use of a condom. Either way, you are going to be raped. In addition, while the ink is still drying on the bailout package, the car industry is standing in line asking for additional billions to stay afloat. Who said welfare isn’t alive and well in America? 

Bundle that with the massive support given the Republican Party by a vast majority of right-wing Christian ministers preaching from their pulpits, like little wound up dolls, the evils of liberal politics that calls for equal rights for sodomites and that uphold laws that allow for the killing of the unborn, and you have an incredible hodge-podge of strange bedfellows that, in their actions, malign the very Christian principles they are alleged to be championing. As a Christian I too stand against the murder of the unborn and against the abomination (God’s Word not mine) of sodomy. My stand is not based on some phobic dislike of sodomites or abortionist; it is based on an understanding that God judges nations that authorize such behaviors. And we have historical and Biblical proof that cultures that have indulged such behaviors, no matter how sophisticated, have declined. I believe America is under judgment now for its embrace of these behaviors, and that our current economic situation reflects it. Now to the schizophrenia mentioned earlier.

Barak Obama is a Christian by a faith-filled confession of Jesus Christ made more than 20-years ago; he is a Harvard Law School graduate and at one time the head of their Law Review – a very prestigious position and honor bestowed on only the best and brightest of Harvard students; he is a husband and father who has been of service to his community and has served his country in the Illinois State Senate and as a senator in the USA Congress; he has even keynoted the 2004 Democratic Convention for John Kerry, yet the McCain/Palin Campaign and the Republican Party labeled him as a Muslim, a consort of terrorists, both domestic and foreign, and a socialist. One must ask how a person portrayed in such manner could ever be the Democratic candidate for the highest office in the land. Are democrats stupid? I don’t think they are; their man is now president-elect. So what happened?

Sarah Palin, an alleged believer in Jesus, despite evidence to the contrary, lied and in scathing terms misrepresented the truth concerning this man. In one of the vilest campaigns in modern American history, John McCain and his toxic side-kick pulled every filthy trick they could think of to win the White House. Watching the crowds that gathered to their call to arms – overwhelmingly stocked with White people, I was reminded of pictures I had seen of lynch mobs. Thank God their campaign failed. More importantly, thank God that a majority of the American people saw through the emotional carnage being drummed up by these two and voted with intelligence to stop our slide into economic chaos and out of world leadership.

What the McCain/Palin Campaign left as its residue is a divide in this country that left many Republicans and members of the Christian right believing that God has deserted the USA, that we are perched on the precipice of hell, and that they must somehow circle their political and spiritual wagons and fight for America. The divide it left is racial in nature and I believe it will mar the socio-political landscape of this country in deleterious ways, and hinder President Obama’s sincere attempts to overcome, with the help of a united citizenry, the extremely caustic economic and social issues facing the nation. When there is a hole in the lifeboat everyone’s best job is bailing.

Personally, I believe they have missed the boat. I believe the Republican Party and its Christian right cohorts have become so entrenched in politico-religious dogma and tradition until the wind of the Spirit that they are looking for to bring America to a new level of safety for its citizens and institutions economically, socio-culturally and internationally, is in fact blowing and they are missing it. I believe a spiritual genesis is underway spearheaded 13-years ago by the Million Man March, in which Black and Brown men from all over the African and Caribbean world partnered with African American men to marshal in an era of social, political and spiritual responsibility that had worldwide significances. I believe President-Elect Barak Obama is a spiritual key that God is using to open an era of worldwide hope that began on October 16, 1995, with the Million Man March, and that is now plateauing into a worldwide judgment spiritually attached to Barak Obama’s presidency. I believe he will be a force for world good and that world leaders will respond to him because they are looking for genuine leadership that has balance, wisdom and integrity; they want this leadership to come from America and they sense that the salient qualities for such rests in this man. There has been worldwide celebration following his election; people have danced in the streets in Australia, Japan, China, Africa, England, all over, because they can feel what I feel – a shift in the heavenlies, an opening in the spiritual universe that is heralding honest and wise change and a chance for the world to balance itself in what maybe its final epoch as we currently know it. 

Let’s look at some very unusual things that have come as a result of his campaign:

 ·        In Baltimore, MD, members of a particular neighborhood saw the neighborhood’s drug kingpin and all of his henchmen in line to vote. He told the people there who knew him that he had made all of them sign up to vote and that he was quitting selling drugs. This kind of behavior was report in several other locations and in other cities.

·        The people of Gambia, Africa have petitioned the president of the country to change the name of Lake Victoria to Lake Obama.

·        World leaders have called President-Elect Obama to schedule meetings with him. Hopefully all are looking for workable solutions to problems impacting there nations.

·        People in Italy supported Obama’s campaign and rejoiced when he won.

·        People in Cuba spoke of the possibility of new relationships with America that they felt won’t have happened under a McCain/Palin presidency. People in Canada, Mexico, France, Austria and Pakistan responded similarly.

The only time in modern history that the world responded to an American President in this manner occurred when John F. Kennedy came into office. With that presidency came an increase in the sway of American leadership around the globe, sadly ended by assassins’ bullets much too soon to produce the hope the world had pinned to it.

I don’t know what the future holds for this man. I have seen him produce what I thought I would never see in my lifetime – an African American male sitting in the White House as president. And given the enormity of that task, his humble beginnings, the miracles it took to get him in position to run and the world’s reaction to his election, clearly he is a man of destiny pulled into the forefront of world events less by ability than by Divine Providence. Somehow despite the obvious, ministers on the Christian Right and some Republican leaders seem to be missing this point. The millions from every ethnic background who voted for him have not.

 I ask a needy nation to keep this man in its prayers.