The faith of Obama: a secular messiah

This Christmas is the last occasion when Barack Obama will have time to reflect and think at his own pace for the next four, and probably eight, years. It offers him a brief gap between the crazed schedule of the campaign — last year he was campaigning on Boxing Day — and the pressures of the presidency. As Obama relaxes in his native Hawaii, he will be preparing for a job that will make the challenges of the campaign insignificant in comparison. After he takes the Oath of Office he will find himself in the unique position of being both the most powerful man on earth and at the mercy of events. Problems anywhere in the world will have a tendency to become his problem very quickly.

Obama will be sworn in with his hand on the Bible. He will end his Oath of Office by adding the words ‘so help me God’. But Obama’s relationship with his faith is, like so much about him, complex. This time last year there was an assumption that, if nominated, he could make a breakthrough with Evangelical voters, a group that had favoured Bush by a 57-point margin in 2004. After all, Obama had written in deeply personal terms about his own religious awakening. His speeches were infused with biblical language, and his personal and family life was unimpeachable in contrast to both his primary and general election opponent.

But the revelation that Jeremiah Wright — the man who had revived his faith, presided over his marriage and baptised his children — was a racialist prone to ranting about the evils of the US government made it far more difficult for Obama to talk about his religious beliefs. If he did so, he would open himself up to questions about his relationship with Wright: a subject that Obama could not allow to become a major issue.