Huckobama
Interesting piece. You might be interested in this short bio of the author of that piece.
Jacques Berlinerblau
Jacques Berlinerblau is associate Professor and Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Some sixteen years ago he received a doctorate in ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literature from New York University. Soon after, for reasons that he himself has never fully understood, he completed another doctorate in theoretical sociology from the New School for Social Research. Feeling sufficiently credentialed to write about and research any topic under the sun, his areas of interest include the Bible, its composition, its interpretation, and in particular the way that it has been dragooned into modern political discourse. To this end he has published "The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously" (Cambridge:2005) and the forthcoming "Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics" (Westminster John Knox: 2008). An earlier book, "Heresy in the University: The Black Athena Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals" (Rutgers: 1999) probed the manner in which institutions of higher education handle scholarly dissent. He has written extensively in scholarly journals on the subject of heretics, intellectuals, secularism, and Jewish civilization. This confluence of interests accounts, to a great degree, for his fascination with modern Jewish-American literature. A life-long New Yorker, he has recently moved to Washington D.C. with his family and is beguiled by the strange traffic lights that count down the seconds until they finally change colors. Close.
One distinction and I think a critical one that he failed to make is the difference between confessional religious practices and coercive ones. I read Obama to be in the confessional tradition, basically saying here is where I am in life, here is my answer to questions of the meaning of life, and I invite you to consider it. Coercive traditions turn to the state to produce citizens with the proper values. I don't read Obama that way at all. |
