A current debate, raging in some corners, sputtering in others, is whether or not American president-elect Barack Obama is a Christian.

The brouhaha was reawakened by a reprinted interview conducted four years by Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun Times, that included the following exchange:  

Obama: There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell.

Falsani: You don’t believe that?

Obama: I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.”

What’s more, in a meeting earlier this year with several Christian leaders, Rev. Franklin Graham pressed Obama on the point. Obama’s answer was similar: he had a hard time believing that his mother, who was not Christian, would be burning in hell.

Well, as reported by BeliefNet, this led several conservative bloggers to point out that Mr. Obama’s views contradicted a fundamental tenet of Christianity — that salvation comes through Christ.

Joe Carter on Culture11.com questioned whether Mr. Obama had “a true knowledge of Christ.”

Rod Dreher wrote, “It’s the Church of Christianity without Christ. It’s Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, so let’s call it what it is — but not what it is not, which is Christianity.”

Earlier in the year, former Sen. Rick Santorum called Mr. Obama a religious “phony” for the same reason.

What most of the conservative Christian bloggers have in common is the belief that America was founded on the sort of orthodoxy as outlined above, and that a Barack H. Obama will undercut all that bedrock. They are guided by groups like the Christian Anti-defamation League, who work to "return America to Christ."

Well, here’s a weigh-in by John Adams, founding father and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Now, my Friend, can Prophecies, or miracles convince You, or Me, that infinite Benevolence, Wisdom and Power, created and preserves, for a time, innumerable millions [only] to make them miserable forever; for his own Glory? Wretch! What is his Glory? Is he ambitious? does he want promotion? Is he vain? tickled with Adulation? Exulting and tryumphing in his Power and the Sweetness of his Vengence? Pardon me, my Maker, for these aweful Questions. My Answer to them is always ready: I believe no such Things.

My Adoration of the Author of the Universe is too profound and too sincere. The Love of God and his Creation; delight, Joy, Tryumph, Exultation in my own existence, ‘tho but an Atom, a Molecule Organique, in the Universe; are my religion. Howl, Snarl, bite, Ye Calvinistick! Ye Athanasian Divines, if You will. Ye will say, I am no Christian: I say Ye are no Christians: and there the account is ballanced. Yet I believe all the honest men among you, are Christians in My Sense of the Word." (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 14 September 1813)

However you come down on these matters… (and you will come down) Happy Thanksgiving! to all our U.S.A. friends. May you find your centre…I mean center.

Brian fell off the wagon. He told me of his depression. His cold. His argument with someone at Hope Mission’s shelter, and now, his reluctance of going back. He stood spilling this all out on the sidewalk, stuttering fast, like he was afraid I would leave before he finished.

He was clutching a garbage bag half full of bottles. The walkway, were we stood, was still dark with just a sprinkle of light from a Starbucks window. When he finished the newsy part of his story and saw I was still standing there, he began a run down of his new plans. It involved the Yellow Pages and looking up a psychologist. He said he was afraid of his depression…said that’s one thing that if he could get rid of he knew he could make it. We stood beside each other, he had slowed down, his words came slow now and there was even a few silent moments. It was cold. I was ready to go in for my coffee. Brian would be unwelcome, he would stay outside. A lady came by and gave Brian an empty. Always gracious, he tripped over himself thanking her.

This cement walkway, the place where we stood, was once wind swept prairie grass with patches of poplar and paintbrush, yarrow and goldenrod, pincherry and saskatoon, grouse, beaver and whitetail deer. It held most everything that Brain’s ancestors needed.

Brian, if I remember right, is from the Ermineskin Cree Nation. His people have a historical relationship to this land that stretches back centuries. The land, close to a wide friendly river, cared for and carried Brian’s antecedents for a hundred generations. Their struggle, only a few generations ago, was a singular one. It was a lover’s quarrel with the land they knew. They understood that the land could be harsh. But it was always there. And it could be wooed back. Like a lover. Given gifts. And it would again respond. And Brian’s great grandfather’s, great-great grandmother would again thrive. Today Brian fights for his life in a world he can’t quite understand. He picks aluminum cans for meals. Like his ancient grandparents, he still sleeps by the river, but without fire.

It is good on this day, as well, to remember the countless number of civilians who have died in all our wars.

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God’s home is absence. God is found in absence, says a Rabbi who should know. How he expects me to make sense of that is beyond me.

Annie Dillard instead offers an experience we can understand. She says, Many times in Christian churches she has heard the pastor say to God. "All your actions show your wisdom and your love." And every time she tried in vain to find the courage to rise and shout, That’s a lie!" Just, as she says, to put the things on solid footing.

Does God live in the consciousness of the cosmos, as quasi-mystic Joel Goldsmith surmises? I say it makes more sense to say he makes his home in the unconsciousness of the universe. A place where, as near as I can figure, absence is well rooted.

Do we find God in the coils of absence, just by seeking? or chanting? or praying?

I find that often, here in the monastery, in contrast to expectation, God’s absence is pronounced. And so I have no trouble singing along with the monks the Canticle of Isaiah: that God’s ways are higher than my ways and his thoughts beyond my thoughts. Which seems to me just another way of expressing God’s absence.

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It was said St. Martin of Tours was scoffed at, when, having been approached by a beggar who was freezing because of the cold, cut his cloak in half, keeping half and giving half to the unfortunate beggar. It was also said of St. Martin–who is celebrated on this day by all Catholics–that after this, he remained a soldier for two more years, but in name only.