The Independent News Source
Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
Evangelicals laud Obama's Nobel
by Jerry Filteau on Oct. 09, 2009
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
PDF version
Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionWASHINGTON -- When President Barack Obama was declared this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Oct. 9 for his work to create a world free of nuclear weapons, U.S. Evangelical leaders gathered in the Washington suburb of Landover, Md., congratulated him, calling the abolition of nuclear weapons a moral issue of highest importance.
Here is the news release from the Evangelical Leaders Forum of the National Association of Evangelicals:
Christian leaders gathered at the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) Evangelical Leaders Forum at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden congratulated President Barack Obama for the announcement that he will receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. In their cons ideration of the award, the Nobel Committee cited “special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”
Leith Anderson, President of the NAE, said: “I first heard the call for a world free of nuclear weapons from President Ronald Reagan when he addressed the National Association of Evangelicals over twenty-five years ago. The Nobel prize for President Obama acknowledges and perpetuates the Reagan vision.”
Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland—A Church Distributed, a member of President Obama’s Faith Advisory Council, and an NAE Board Member, said, “The ambition to free future generations from the fear of indiscriminate destruction is a truly nonpartisan ambition that resonates with our deepest moral convictions. President Obama is to be congratulated for setting a course so that the generation that had school drills to hide under our desks in case of nuclear attack should be the source of a permanent recess from fear for our grandchildren.”
Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, founding director of the Two Futures Project, remarked, “There is much to be done and the road to a world free of nuclear weapons is daunting and long. But this Nobel Prize highlights the importance of setting that goal to guide our steps in the short term as we seek to shape a more secure world. To prevent nuclear terrorism, we must make progress toward the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. A new generation needs to deal once and for all with the legacy of the Cold War.” The Two Futures Project, a confessional Christian movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons, is sponsoring a track on preventing nuclear terrorism at today’s NAE-sponsored Evangelical Leaders Forum.
Jo Anne Lyon, General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church and an NAE Board Member, said, “The work to reduce the nuclear threat and abolish nuclear weapons is a moral issue that stands at the center of the call to be pro-life. It is a goal that all American Christians, regardless of party, can and should support.”
The NAE has a long history of speaking out on nuclear issues. Its 1986 “Peace, Freedom, and Security Studies” called for the need to balance disarmament goals with a concern for human rights and freedom. More recently, the NAE co-sponsored a 2008 consultation at the Hoover Institution with Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, to explore the need to re-engage the nuclear issue in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 era. Evangelical leaders including Joel Hunter and Jo Anne Lyon attended the consultation. Mr. Shultz has been at the vanguard of a group of former Cold Warriors calling for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons as imperative for American national security.
Obama is nothing but talk.
Obama is nothing but talk. Admittedly, the talk sounds good but let us see some evidence of success before he is awarded any prize! As far as peace goes, the USA is still in both Iraq & Afghanistan. They are talking about 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Isn't it going to look a little silly if the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize continues both of these wars indefinitely?
GOOD NEWS FOR AND FROM THIS
GOOD NEWS FOR AND FROM THIS GOOD AND DECENT PRESIDENT at long last, brings tears to my eyes of wonder and disbelief, to read: "President Barack Obama was declared this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Oct. 9 for his work to create a world free of nuclear weapons" a great good news I first learn here on our wonderful NCRonline.org pages - the most intelligent, soulful, only reliable anglo-American news source.
Oddly, today I chose for our lectio divina the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan's twenty-two year old pamphlet The Hole in the Ground: A PArable for Peacemakers, which reads as urgently now as then. I beg everyone to find an old copy and pray with it, find support with it, live with it, celebrate it.
The Back Matter describes it this way:
"The Hole in the Ground: A Parable for Peacemakers is a compelling account of the drain of the arms race on human and material resources and the complicity of corporations and the American community in supporting the death trade. In the face of despair, (the Reverend Father) Daniel Berrigan (SJ) asks us to choose life, to choose for our future and the future of the world's children."
If I could I would italicize those words: "choose life" but am not talented like Aileen here.
Choose life.
The Afterword by Martha Roth includes these words regarding the struggle to convert Honeywell from the war industry to purely peaceful industry: "Reluctantly, we began to understand that the logic of capitalist enterprise favors production for war - because weapons of destruction are used up, in their destructive employment, and if they are not used they quickly become obsolete, creating an inexhaustible demand for more. Reluctantly, we also learned that our beautiful ideals of freedom and democratic process could be subverted by corporate interests. Government war contracts - we soon learned that the word defense is a euphemism - go to companies that lobby for them, and our local businessmen maintain an active war lobby (p. 21)."
Reads like the most recent social encyclical.
Follow our good President's lead.
Work for peace, and for health care as a human right.
May all Americans stand now proudly and firmly behind our President, whom the African Synod in Rome calls a gift from God, who makes us proud.
Dare bear the Audacity of Hope.
God bless our President!
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
sure the Evangelicals like it
sure the Evangelicals like it ... but I.m waiting to hear what A/B Burke, A/B Chaput and bishop Finn have to say before I know what to think!! (-:
I didn't know Obama has done
I didn't know Obama has done anything in this area other than have a vision. Award comes across as tinny and hollow--more political than substantive.
I should listen to religious
I should listen to religious people-why? You claim to speak on behalf of someone who's invisible, inaudible and untouchable and expect to be taken seriously?
Interestingly, not a single
Interestingly, not a single one of the Evangelical names mentioned is a name with significant prominence among Evangelicals in general.
Sure, their fellow clergy in their respective denominations will likely recognize their names (the likelihood rising if they live nearby or attended the same seminaries). But the average Evangelical in the pews, looking at that list, just shrugged and said, "Who?"
I'm inclined to view this report as spin. Evangelicals, as a group, proved rather more resistant than Catholics to Obama's overtures in the last election; it is a portion of the electorate where he has not effectively closed the "God gap." But here we have an announcement: "Looky here, Evangelicals like Obama, too!"
When names which constitute exemplars of the evangelical mainstream start wearing those "O" buttons, I'll buy that argument. But this report looks like a bit of cherry-picking.
R.C has a point about waiting
R.C has a point about waiting to see what 'big name' Evangelicals say about Obama getting the nobel peace prize.. .. Me too... I'm waiting to hear from Sarah Palin and Eli Johnson.. mabe Beck too. before I make up my mind..
Post new comment