…Obama, for all his faults of spirit — arrogance, aloofness — does not look like a sinner. This may sound counterintuitive, but in the end Christians know one another as sinners.

Editor’s Note: We seldom provide links to the Huffington Post, but that does not mean you can’t find an article or Op-Ed piece that is of value now and then. This author’s Presbyterian roots are extemely important in developing her analysis of this unique phenonemon in our current political culture and we recommend you take the time to click the ‘Read More’ and read the whole article (it’s long, but it’s well worth it!). By the way, Mayhill Fowler’s home church (of which she speaks) in the article, is Second Presbyterian (EPC) in Memphis, Tennessee.

The roots of the “Obama is a Muslim” delusion/lie here: in the grain of truth to the story, which inadvertently the official Barack Obama hagiography has nourished; in the character of American Christianity, which began to change in (yet another) Great Awakening forty years ago; in the failures of American education and the consequences of a half-century of assiduously secular mainstream media…

Perplexed, pundits have of late posited various explanations, assigning the Muslim delusion to Islamophobia, racism, anger at the economy and big government. The wellspring for the Muslim delusion is not politics, however; we must resist the temptation to connect large issues of faith with specific politics too quickly…

…Back in the South, where I was also following the presidential primaries, the Muslim myth took on an entirely different character. Here, more than in any other region, you are likely to find churches whose membership believe that the current war on terrorism is at its heart a fundamentalist battle between Christianity and Islam.

I grew up in a somnolent Southern Presbyterian congregation that has become such a militant, if not so publicly demonstrative, institution. I always visit my former church when I go home; but I learned — not too long after 9/11 — that its core fundamentalist conviction can not be dislodged.

Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/he-is-not-one-of-us_b_710361.html

Mayhill Fowler writes about American politics and foreign affairs for The Huffington Post. She covered the 2008 presidential election for OffTheBus, the Huff Post experiment in citizen journalism. Her book about those eighteen months, Notes from a Clueless Journalist: Media, Bias and the Great Election of 2008 is available as an e-book for Kindle, BlackBerry and iPhone in January, 2010. A former teacher and editor, she has twice been a Knight Journalism Fellow at the University of Maryland.