No one really throws hard balls to the President, so it was still somewhat surprising when he and\/or folks within his administration took three big swings at all things Easter and came up with a goose egg (not the kind you want to find on Easter).\u00a0 The first swing and miss came courtesy of President Obama’s choice of which church he and his family would worship\u00a0at on Easter Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
Now, as a (Southern) Baptist pastor, I take some comfort knowing that the President chose to worship at the historic\u00a0Shiloh Baptist Church in the nation’s Capital.\u00a0 Having worshipped at a large Methodist church last Easter (not that there’s anything wrong with that), I was glad to hear that the\u00a0First Family would be worshipped with\u00a0Christians of the Baptist persuasion this Easter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, my joy turned to perplexity when I discovered (no thanks to the Washington Post<\/em> and other MSM)\u00a0more of the history of Shiloh Baptist Church, particularly of their current pastor.\u00a0 Even as we can celebrate the founding of Shiloh by freed slaves in 1863, one has to wonder why the President or his people chose this particular Baptist church at attend on Easter?\u00a0 Was it because the church hosted a “anti-Israel hate fest in 2009?”<\/p>\n In October of 2009, while Taylor (an Associate Pastor)\u00a0was serving in the Shiloh Baptist Church and as an intern in the Obama administration, the church hosted a hate Israel conference sponsored by a radicalized Palestinian Christian liberation theology group that called the establishment of Israel \u201cThe Catastrophe\u201d (Nakba) and has <\/strong>openly questioned Israel\u2019s right to exist. (full article here<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Was Shiloh Baptist chosen by (or for) America’s first post-racial President\u00a0because the current pastor, Dr. Wallace Charles Smith, sees Christianity in terms of race, not unlike Obama’s former pastor?<\/p>\n \u201c[Pastor Smith] talked about how his baby<\/a> grandson\u2019s gurgling is actually \u201ctalking\u201d because he is saying \u2018I am here \u2026 they tried to write me off as 3\/5 a person in the Constitution, but I am here right now \u2026 and is saying I am not going to let anybody from stopping me from being what God wants me to be.\u2019\u201d (full article here<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That Dr. Smith could even ask such a question belies a complete disconnect from reality.\u00a0 That a Christian pastor would somehow see racists or\u00a0white supremacists\u00a0as the ones who would stop his grandson from “being what God wants me to be”<\/em> when, at the same time,\u00a0you have the most pro-abortion President sitting in your pews — who has gone out of his way to support abortion, kind of making it impossible at the front-end for anyone’s grandchild to be all that God wants them to be — should tell us all that we need to know about Dr. Wallace Charles Smith.<\/p>\n I’m not sure which is worse:\u00a0 that President and Mrs. Obama chose Shiloh themselves or that their advance team\u00a0chose Shiloh as the place where the\u00a0Obama’s would celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 For someone supposedly the smartest man who has ever occupied the\u00a0Oval Office, this President’s choices would certainly argue the opposite.<\/p>\n Those choices include the people who the President surrounds himself with.\u00a0 One of the more important — and visible — people in the Obama Administration is the White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney.\u00a0 While Jay may think that he is a gifted communicator, he (and by extension, the President) took two more swings at Easter-related pitches and whiffed both of them.<\/p>\n First, when asked why the President did not release an official proclamation on Easter, Mr. Carney seemed to dismiss the question in a rather mocking style.\u00a0 As I have not watched him in press conferences that much, I don’t know whether or not a condescending style by Mr. Carney is normal or not.\u00a0 If I had to guess, I would say yes.<\/p>\n In trying to explain that the President and his family attended Easter Worship Services at Shiloh Baptist\u00a0Church, Carney tried to downplay the significance of no Easter proclamation.\u00a0 While it was nice that the Obama’s attended church (although see my caveat above), church attendance and Easter proclamations are not mutually exclusive.\u00a0 Why couldn’t the President released a simple proclamation for what is arguably the single most important holiday for Christians?\u00a0 He seems to be able to produce proclamations for just about every major Muslim holiday, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to issue a proclamation around Easter.<\/p>\n But, instead of acknowledging the oversight (if it was an oversight), Mr. Carney laughed off the question in a way that seemed to be mocking the reported who asked.<\/a> Whether or not one sees the need for an Easter proclamation from this President (or any other President) is not necessarily the issue.\u00a0 The reason why Carney swung and missed the second easy pitch was because of a pride that seems to have infected this White House.<\/p>\n