For a while, it looked as if the right planned to attack Barack Obama for his “hidden Muslim background<\/a>,” which, as it turned out, didn’t exist. Now, it appears the right may be ready to go after<\/a> Obama’s actual<\/i> religion.<\/p>\n During the “Obameter” segment on the February 7 edition of MSNBC’s Tucker, host Tucker Carlson criticized Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), a presumptive candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, for being a member of a church that Carlson claimed “sounds separatist to me” and “contradicts the basic tenets of Christianity,” a subject Carlson said he was “actually qualified to discuss.” <\/p>\n Carlson was referring to the “Black Value System” advocated by the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, of which Obama is a member. A February 6 Chicago Tribune article reported that “conservative critics have seized on Trinity’s 12-point Black Value System, especially the portion relating to ‘middleclassness,’ as evidence that Obama is a divisive candidate who rejects mainstream American values and is primarily focused on the black community.” <\/p>\n Carlson pointed to the “disavowal of the pursuit of ‘middleclassness’ ” in the church’s tenets, calling the church’s mission a “racially exclusive theology” and “a theology that ministers to one group of people, based on race.” Carlson claimed that Trinity’s theology is “racially exclusive” and “wrong,” adding that “it’s hard to call that Christianity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, I suppose this is, to a degree, progress. At least conservatives like Carlson are targeting Obama’s actual church and actual faith tradition, as opposed to the made-up stories from last month.<\/p>\n But that, I’m afraid, is about the only encouraging angle to this nonsense.
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\nFirst, what makes Tucker Carlson think he’s qualified as a theologian? He<\/i> knows what does and does not deserve to be called Christianity? I had no idea being a largely unwatched talk-show host with no theological background at all necessarily makes one such an authority on faith that he can reject an entire congregation as not Christian enough.<\/p>\n