My calloused heart went out to our young chief today upon reading Laurie Goodstein’s front page piece in the Times on what a pastorless President has to go though to get spiritual nurture.
Like a lot of other people, I had kind of been waiting for the First Family to pick a DC-area congregation and do the usual thing: show up there often enough to create the appearance of belonging. And, one had hoped for the girls, something more than the appearance: another tiny slice of real community secured in the decisive way that only youngsters seem to be able to secure it.
But Goodstein reminded us of “the logistical challenges in finding a church that can accommodate the kind of crowd the Obamas would attract.” Stupid me, I hadn’t really thought of this at all. Sunday morning paparazzi and the damage done to any worshipping community that would try to bear with it: the security issue, the resentment of the gawkers when the Firsts don’t show up, the sheer impossibility of their even attempting to have a regular worship life.
Yet imagine as well the impossibility of what Obama is doing now, if Goodstein’s report is to be taken on faith. Five (count ‘em, five) men of varying tones and tempers taking turns providing spiritual support, and mainly over the phone.
Because Goodstein’s piece was essentially unsourced, some caution is in order as to even believing that Obama accepts rotating support and counsel from Jim Wallis, Joel Hunter, Otis Moss Jr., Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes. This crew struck me as a little too Dream Teamy in respect to the political and cultural stances and demographic constituencies of the distinguished clerics who are said to make it up. On the other hand, the absence of even one woman pastor on the team is not something the usual White House vetting process would have missed, so who is to say that these are not the President’s actual picks for his prayer team?
I’m going to break character now and pretend that I don’t even care that there’s not a single pastor on the team who quite fits my own definition of “progressive” in the lot. Never mind the claim Wallis makes to Goodstein that back in the late ‘90s he and Obama both styled themselves “progressive Christians” in relation to the dominant Religious Right. As others have said far more eloquently than I could ever say, it’s time for Wallis to stop defining “progressive” in terms that suit his own convenience—and time as well for progressive Democrats to think a bit more seriously about what they are willing to accept as an echt expression of progressive Christian faith.
No, for present purposes I really don’t care who they are. My point here is that none of them can help the President stay centered and stay righteous absent a more sustained and in-person conversation. A pastor needs to enjoy the complete trust of the congregant, which means that the congregant needs to know that he/she can actually bare his/her soul—all the brokenness, all the doubts, all the anger, and (in Obama’s case) all the spiritual heartache that goes with shouldering impossible burdens. And there is no way President Obama can get to know and trust any of these reverend gentlemen to this degree of vulnerability now that it’s all out in public.
Publicity is the other reason I’m skeptical that this is real. If any of these clergy leaders is actually pastoring our President today, he would surely not want it known, nor would the President himself want it known. Having this relationship made public is unseemly and unworkable for both parties, but it is especially unworkable for the clergyperson who must now look upon his role as one that needs to be maintained for the sake of appearances. Unless he wishes to be a mere compliant chaplain.
Kings and other potentates have made use of the services of such chaplains from time immemorial. Not surprisingly, Sir Thomas Mores among royal favorites are few and far between. Still rarer are still feistier prophets like the Bible’s Nathan, willing to front the king in his chamber and shout “You are the man!” in the face of royal criminality.
I understand that Obama craves and needs spiritual counsel. But in my judgment, it is the high-placed pastors who are willing to have our newspaper of record identify them as the ones providing such counsel who are truly, and much more than the President, standin’ in the need of prayer.
