I *LOVE* Obama’s new flyer for Kentucky!

Obama is making a good faith effort to win Kentucky, pun intended. He’s sending out this flyer to appeal to evangelicals.

Now, there are a couple things to note about this ad and since my family is heavily evangelical, I feel somewhat qualified to comment on it.

First, it looks like Obama is in a bit of a sticky wicket in KY. After all, it was only a month ago that small town folks were called bitter and clung to their religion, xenophobia and guns when they didn’t understand what was going on in the world. I gotta tell you, that didn’t go over too well in PA and I suspect WV wasn’t too amused either. And Obama suffered humiliating defeats in both states. I’ll betcha Bittergate is still turning up in their internal polls. That coupled with Wright makes it necessary for him to roll out this flyer. In other words, it’s pandering out of panic. Do you think Kentuckians will be assuaged? Ahem, moving on.

In this flyer, Obama says:

“my faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”

Very interesting. Now most of you will say this makes perfect sense if you are a Christian. Ahhh, but *evangelical* Christians believe that we are saved by grace alone. It isn’t necessary to do any more than accept Jesus. It’s the bare minimum requirement but an important one. It’s where the protestant church divides from the Catholic church. Your good deeds do not get you into heaven; grace does. No need for good works, pennance or any of that. But here, Obama is putting his work first as fulfilment of God’s will. Is it a minor point? I dunno. I’ve only lived with evangelicals, I can’t get inside their heads. But it may suggest that he doesn’t know his audience very well.

Finally, there is a rumor floating around in the escatological side of evangelicalism that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Hey, if you feed people enough Left Behind books, they start to forget they’re fiction. And here he is, sending out a flyer looking to all the evangelical world like a false prophet (point 1), unbeliever (point 2) standing in front of a cross.

It’s delicious. 😉

[UPDATE] — katiebird’s take (amazingly I had this scheduled to go later this morning):