Several weeks ago Michael Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson, offered to send the book, The Faith of Barack Obama, to the first 100 bloggers willing to read and review the book. The book was an easy read, with only one hundred forty-four pages. Mansfield does a good job of covering facts and details, without getting much into his own personal opinion. Several things in the book impressed me, as you’ll see below.

I wish I could have read Stephen Mansfield’s book, “The Faith of Barack Obama” in a vacuum, without any outside noise to interfere with the subject. However, unlike a jury sequestered during an important trial, life doesn’t typically play out that way.

In addition to the end of summer crunch time, three major political events have occurred since I first cracked the pages of Mansfield’s latest. Most notably (at least in my opinion), the Saddleback Civil Forum was held on August 16, allowing Obama and McCain to answer questions about faith and politics. Watch here. Additionally, just last week Obama made a surprise visit to my own fair city – Lynchburg, Virginia. And finally, the Democratic National Convention opened this week.

What would have been an otherwise quick read and an equally quick post, instead turned into a few weeks’ worth of reading with a lot of extraneous commentary. I’ve given far more thought to the faith of Barack Obama as a result of Mansfield’s book and the aforementioned events, than I would have otherwise.

A Chronology of Loss
Just after the table of contents, the author includes a chronology of Barack Obama’s life. The number of losses that occurred in this simple two-page timeline struck me. Obama was a child of divorce, not once, but twice. He grew up without really knowing either of the fathers in his life. His father and stepfather both died when he was in his twenties and then nearly a decade later Obama would grieve the loss of his grandfather and mother. Those losses created, at least for me, a backdrop of empathy for the person, Barack Obama.

Religious Ties
Mansfield does a great job of painting Obama to be a real person who struggles with issues of faith, rather than the leader who’s got it all figured out. Obama’s spiritual influences were as varied as today’s voters’ opinions about matters of faith. His maternal grandparents came from Methodist and Baptist roots, which were eventually grafted into some form of Unitarianism. These were the parents of Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, a self-declared atheist.

Dunham married a Kenyan, Barack Obama Sr., who “lived a village life, herding goats and submitting to the rituals of a village witch doctor…in the West, he had rejected the Muslim faith of his youth just as he rejected the babblings of all witch doctors.” He insisted religion was superstition.

Two years after their divorce in 1964, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, a Muslim, and moved to “one of the most troubled places on earth” – Indonesia. Because his step-father was a Muslim, young Barry (Barack) was listed as a Muslim in official documents. In 1968, Barry began first grade attending a Catholic school. “Each day he would cross himself, pray the Hail Mary, the Our Father, and whatever else the attending nuns required.” A couple of years later, Barry attended a public school and studied the doctrines of Islam during the required two hours of religious instruction.

Religious Swirl
One of my favorite phrases in the book is when Mansfield says Obama “lived in a largely Muslim country. He prayed at the feet of a Catholic Jesus. He attended a mosque with his stepfather and learned Islam in his public school. At home, his mother taught him her atheistic optimism.”

Suitable Detachment
Mansfield goes on to say that Barack “was to live in a Muslim country but be taught by his stepfather’s example to ignore the most fundamental teachings of Islam. He was to attend a Roman Catholic school, but regard Christianity as no more than superstition. And he was to love a mother who viewed all religion as nothing more than a man-made tool for contending with the mysteries of life.”

Is it any wonder that Obama lived his life with “a parched soul?” Though Barack’s mother was a spiritual person, she was “isolated by the detachment she prized.” When asked if he would join a friend at church, his response was:

“And I would shrug and play the question off, unable to confess that I could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly, between faith and simple endurance; that while I believed in the sincerelity I heard in their voices, I remained a reluctant skeptc, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won.”

With questions raging and doubts unresolved, Obama went to Trinity United Church of Christ, a place like many black churches, “where the line between and saved were fluid.” He sat there, a man of doubt and conflict. At sermon’s end, he found himself in tears.

Love is a Choice
According to Mansfield, Obama’s conversion was a process that took months. When the turning came, “it was a decision to enter a faith by joining a people of faith, to come home to a community and so come home to God.”

Obama’s turning to Christianity came as a choice. His questions didn’t disappear. He submitted himself to God and dedicated himself to discovering His truth. Obamas’s statement, “it’s not faith if you’re absolutely certain,” reminds me of the New Testament father in Mark 9:24 who  said, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

Obama was genuinely captured by the experience. Rev. Jeremiah Wright tenderly preached the compassion and mercies of Jesus Christ. “Obama had found the answer for his soul’s need, and only a cynical heart would refuse the possibility of a lonely black man in his twenties finding faith through the preaching of God’s Word.”

Perhaps Mansfield says it best in the last Chapter, “For Obama, faith is not simply political garb, something a focus group told him he ought to try. Instead, religion to him is transforming, lifelong, and real. It is who he is at the core, what he has raised his daughters to live, and the well he will draw from as he leads. While Americans are used to religious insincerity from their political leaders, Obama seems to be sincere in what he proclaims. He embraced religion long before he embraced politics. Indeed, it was his faith that gave him the will to serve in public office, and the worldview of that faith that shaped his understanding of what he would do once he came to power.”

According to Mansfield, it’s possible that part of the impact of Barack Obama in our generation may be for the purpose of helping wed faith to a political vision that leads to meaningful change in our time.

Here are my questions for you: How has your upbringing influenced your faith decisions? If you’re a Christian, was your conversion experience a well thought out choice, or an irresistible dramatic encounter? Or maybe you would not call yourself a Christian. What thoughts do you have about faith in general and Christianity specifically?

(Note, there are other themes of the book that I will be exploring in future posts, including: community, excellence and the “Four Faces of Faith.”)