A Wee Blether

I voted for President today. Since I’ll be in Scotland for Georgia’s February 5th primary election, I filled out my Dekalb County absentee ballot today. Leave it to a seminary student to choose a candidate on the basis of a theological doctrine, but that’s the best explanation for my decision.

Barack Obama is the candidate who embodies eschatology; his campaign is one of eschatological hope.

Now I could describe how Obama’s policy positions most clearly match mine, but that’d be boring and folks everywhere will be blogging about such things. Instead, here’s why Obama is the eschatological candidate.

I know this might seem a bit of a stretch. Obama doesn’t talk about the end times. He’s made no indication as to when he considers Christ to be returning. He hasn’t weighed in on how he reads the book of Revelation. But, in my estimation, Obama does function with a clear eschatological underpinnings.

To understand we must separate the strict definition of eschatology from how Christians live eschatologically. My working definition of eschatology is something like, “a theological doctrine having to do with end things; end things as both, 1) the actual final ending of the world and its inhabitants, and 2) final goal or purpose of all things” (credit to George Stroup for that definition).

In mainline churches at least, recent times have seen a dearth of eschatological consideration. We don’t want to be construed as those evangelicals who might read the Left Behind series a bit too carefully. We don’t want to be seen as preparing for a specific time or place of Christ’s return. So, for fear of mislabeling, we don’t talk about Christ’s return enough.

Eschatology is important because it focuses on hope–hope for Christ’s return, hope for the salvation of our individual selves and the renewal of all creation, hope for the fulfillment of God’s prophesies of peace and justice.

Now this hope doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and simply wait for all to be peaches and puppy dogs. Rather, we must work, with this hopeful perspective, for justice here and now. As Cullmann wrote years ago, we at the same time focus on the already as well as the not yet of Christ’s coming. We celebrate that Christ has already come, and we wait in hope as the final redemption has not yet arrived. Now we must focus on hopeful active participation for Christ’s return.

Enter Obama. A republican strategist recently described him as “a walking, talking, hope machine.” His logo looks like a rainbow which, for Christians, reminds us of God’s covenant to Noah (or perhaps suggests Obama is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow). His website sells a shirt reading, “Got Hope?” and a bracelet decorated with the word “HOPE” and the rainbow logo. His grand book is entitled, “The Audacity of Hope” and Obama’s Iowa caucus victory speech contained the word “hope” fourteen times.

In this speech, Obama claimed that his Iowa victory will be remembered as the time when Americans remembered again what hope is. He then described hope in several ways, concluding,

Hope-hope-is what led me here today – with a father from Kenya; a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

Now for slightly more fancy analysis. In his chapter on eschatology in his introduction to Christian theology entitled Faith Seeking Understanding, Dan Migliore goes to great lengths to show how the “doctrine of the last things” functions in every aspect of Christian theology. Eschatology is not a peripheral doctrine, but one so central that it connects every doctrine together. Hope, then, is integral to every Christian doctrine. For this white mainline contemporary theologian, hope is key.

Interestingly, the black theologian James Cone wrote over 30 years ago in a different but not discordant tone. Cone largely concurs with Bosch who affirms, “eschatology is related to action and change.” For Cone, writing in a time of overt oppression of his community, eschatological hope moves him to trumpet against accepting the present as acceptable. For this black theology writing 30+ years ago, hope necessitates action.

Barack Obama’s message is an inspiring and prophetic combination of Migliore and Cone–establishment and near-militant theologians–that skillfully mixes the message of Christianity with an American political platform.

So I voted for Obama, the eschatological candidate, for his message of hope affirms what I believe as a Christian.