Is that “Obamassiah” or “Obamessiah”?

Has a preferred spelling been adopted?

This site is really too amusing a resource- all of the embarrassing, over-the-top, fawning, idol-worshiping, “Obama-the-Savior” quotes and sources in one convenient location. They must be read to be believed… actually, even after reading them they’re still hard to believe.

“Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind.”- Gerald L. Campbell

Remember those alarming best-sellers of a few years back, warning of the immediate danger to the very foundations of the Republic, how the fabric of civil society was about to be rent asunder by the mortal threat of religious faith contaminating/infecting/encroaching/intruding upon the body politic like a cancer? How John Kerry, along with virtually all politicians, felt compelled to solemnly reassure a supposedly nervous public that of course they would never think of letting their own, purely personal- private!- religious beliefs in any way affect their political decisions. How we must by all means always defend that sacred “Wall of Separation” between Church and State?

Kevin Phillips with “American Theocracy”; Chris Hedges with “American Facists”; Michelle Goldberg with “Kingdom Coming”; Joe Conason with “It Can Happen Here”, to name a few. Then there were the countless newspaper editorials, magazine articles, bloggers, TV news and talk show guests sounding dire warnings about “Christianists” and “American Taliban”. Near-paranoid, speculative conspiracy-mongering, searching under every bed and the back of every closet for evidence of that hideous bogeyman, the right-wing Christian extremist.

But hey, left-wing religious fanatics? Where’s that sacred Wall of Separation now, eh? “Never miiind! We don’t need no steenkin’ Wall of Separation! How were we to know that when the Second Coming occurred He’d be one of us? What we need now is unity, for all of us to transcend our separations and achieve unity with the Leader!”

“He is in fact an agent of transformation. He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians [...] I see Barack Obama as a leader for this transcendent moment, the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century…” Gary Hart.

“Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that. That before we can work on the problems we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation [...] I am here right now because I am married to the only person in this race who has a chance of healing this nation.”- Michelle Obama (full transcript here .)

Why is that? Can someone help me understand the peculiar psychology behind this phenomenon?

My first, and admittedly most cynical, thought was that the thing that scared them most about sincere Christian believers was exactly that- their sincerity. Liberals mouthing religious pieties don’t alarm anyone because nobody really believes they’re sincere.

Too cynical. I’m not going to get into “diss”-ing anyones sincerity. I resent it when it’s done to me, when pseudo-sophisticates smugly explain what it is that I “really” believe, as opposed to what I naively think I believe.

OK then, one step away from that is the idea that their fear/contempt is based on the fact that conservative/traditionalist Christians take the teachings of their faith literally, while the liberal sophisticates know it is meant to be understood metaphorically. Nothing fearful about metaphors.

But when their metaphorical Savior manifests as the omnipotent State with all the very real power thereof… be afraid- be very afraid.

It is all creepily familiar from my study of Russian history. The cult of personality that began with Lenin and reached it’s peak of perfection under Stalin, and was then exported to China, Korea, Cuba and finally every tin-pot tyrant “man of the people” in third world hell-holes around the world. Many of Obama’s official campaign posters bear the stamp of the Vladimir Mayakovsky/Agitprop style. Unintentional?

One of the characteristically Orwellian features of Soviet Communism was exactly this pattern of declaring “good” what the day before had been “evil”, and “evil” what had the day before been “good”. Yesterday’s heroes of the Revolution were suddenly revealed at the show trials to have been enemies of the People. Yesterday’s Nazi foes were suddenly allies, until they just as suddenly became foes again. How could anyone dare to risk having any real friendships when that friend, no matter how ordinary or how orthodox his political standing was, might tomorrow be revealed as a counter-revolutionary? Where would that leave you? A co-conspirator at least!

Lord, have mercy.

Then there is what I call the secret history of the world- the spiritual reality that lies behind the superficial “news events” that parade across the daily headlines. I am certainly not making any claim to know what that spiritual reality is- only that there is one, as described in the Old Testament when the prophet is given a vision of the unseen angelic host arrayed alongside his own outnumbered human army.

In the case of this new left-wing religious fanaticism, I am reminded of the following parable from the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew:

43 “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44 Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”

The house is our Western Civilization, swept clean of “religious superstition” by modern secularism (the man). But it is left empty (though “in order”), the superstition not replaced with a direct, living, lively faith in God. The man no doubt remains vigilant against who he thinks is the spirit he cast out (consider how the secularists constantly point to Christianity as the root of all our woes), but the spirit of religious superstition “finds seven other spirits more wicked than himself”, returns to the house, and overpowers the man, “and the last state of that man is worse than the first”.

Lord have mercy indeed.

Further recommended reading: “Liberal Facism“