Obama, Jakes and the “Goose Bump” Factor

What kind of vibes did you feel when Barack Obama claimed the Democratic nomination?

Now that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been kicked to the curb, the nation’s most powerful Democrat is steamrolling his way to the White House. The Obama machine is surging ahead with support from a huge army of young volunteers. And since John McCain isn’t doing much yet to attract the fractured evangelical voting bloc, Sen. Barack Hussein Obama will probably turn red states into blue ones in November.

A lot of people are excited about that possibility, including the nation’s most prominent African-American preacher, T.D. Jakes of Dallas. In a gushing endorsement, he told CNN last week that he “watched with visible goose bumps” as Obama claimed his party’s nomination. “This is not just a victory for African-Americans,” Jakes wrote, “it is a victory for democracy that proves that our country provides possibilities for all people.”

I’ll say amen to the fact that we are finally putting racism behind us. But I must admit that the goose bumps I felt last week were different from the ones Jakes experienced. I sensed sadness, and a bit of dread, as I realized that the people of the United States are hellbent on electing another leader who has no problem with killing unborn babies.

Sorry for being so old-fashioned, but I think abortion is still a relevant issue. Many Christians today say it’s politically impossible to elect a pro-life candidate. They’ve changed the channel. Opposing abortion is, like, so 1980s. Many young Christian voters love to quote the line that says, “There are other issues that are just as important”— listing the environment, food programs and ending the war in Iraq as the trendy new evangelical agenda.

At the risk of seeming out of touch with our Sex in the City culture, I’d like to mention three things to those Christians who are already plastering their cars with Obama bumper stickers:

1. Maintaining the current policy on abortion is not “change.” Obama promises change every time he makes a speech. He’s out to change our economy, our health care system and our foreign policy. He’s a one-man change agent. Yet whenever he has voted on the abortion issue, all he’s done is protect the right to kill our most vulnerable citizens. No innovation here. All he offers is the same old same old.

Everyone on Capitol Hill knows Obama is a radical when it comes to abortion policy. He opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion (a clinical term for stabbing a baby in the neck when his arms, legs and torso are already outside the mother); then he criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold that ban. While an Illinois lawmaker, Obama opposed a bill that would have prevented the killing of an infant born alive during an abortion.

To top that off, Obama said in April that if his young daughters got pregnant out of wedlock, he didn’t want them to be “punished with a baby.” In other words, he wants the abortion industry to thrive.

2. Abortion is racist. African-American pastor Wellington Boone pointed out in an article in Charisma last month that 36 percent of all abortions in the United States are performed on black women—even though they make up only 12 percent of the population. And Obama is OK with that?

It baffles me that liberals who pride themselves on being racially sensitive can get away with supporting a practice that destroys black families. It’s equally baffling that when pro-life African-American politicians enter the political arena they are ignored rather than cheered with Obamaesque fervor. So not only do we kill black babies; we also silence black leaders who don’t worship at the altar of Molech.

3. Abortion contradicts the essence of Christianity. I have dialogued with young Christian voters who say they are supporting Obama because they believe he will bring justice to poor people who’ve never achieved the American dream. Who are we fooling with this empty talk about justice? Hello? The God of justice abhors the slaughter of unborn babies!

Many Christians who support Obama do so because he opposes the Iraq war. I respect their position about a muddled conflict that has lasted too long. But has anybody done the math?

The number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq since 2002 currently stands at 4,092. Yet a slightly smaller number of unborn babies, approximately 3,900, die every day in this country because of abortion. Currently we kill 1.4 million babies a year. Since abortion was legalized we’ve snuffed out more babies than the entire populations of Iraq, Israel and Jordan.

That’s more than 40 million people. It’s a holocaust we deny ever happened.

The mantra of the 2008 Democratic contest has been “every vote counts.” Yet no one, including Obama, is talking about the rights of an unborn infant whose skull is about to be stabbed with scissors or whose brains are about to be sucked out with a vacuum tube. His tiny hands—complete with fingernails by 14 weeks—will certainly never be allowed to press a button in a ballot booth. That gives me goose bumps.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. On Tuesday, June 17, he will be doing a live interview at 8 p.m. (EST) with Christian musician TobyMac. To sign up for this free conference call, or to submit a question for TobyMac, click here.