One last visit to the resource fair at the General Assembly 2009 of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Houston. Last year I attended a workshop on ministry opportunities in China and thought “I would love to do that” – and was then flabbergasted at how difficult it was to get straight answers about who to contact and how to become involved. Someone this year said “you need to talk to Volunteers for China”. Of course I knew of this group but was willing to talk with them again.
This is in no way whatsoever a critique of that group – I may indeed look into joining them for one of their teaching trips to China. And the person with whom I spoke was passionate and helpful. But – and I am not quite sure how this came up – at one point she said:
Who knows what will happen? I mean we thought America would never elect a black president. And Obama was elected! They just love him over there. Everybody loves him. And now they are going to be even more open [to the gospel - listening to and responding to the Christian faith]. God is using the election of Obama. Because the world is going to be much more open to Americans and to the gospel.
Granted that is a rough paraphrase from memory. Maybe not exactly what and how she said but pretty close.
I was stunned. It was all I could do to refrain from saying “are you kidding?!? Do you seriously think the world is going to love America more just because Obama is president? And if everybody loves him as you say – why do they love him? Do they have reasons for this?”
There is actually some possible/probable truth to what she said. At the ACMI 2009 conference outside Los Angeles one speaker discussed how one of the founders of radical Islam was appalled by the degree of racism when he visited the United States (several decades ago). In other words one of the reason at least some people in other countries are so anti-American is because they have been horrified by our history of racism. That is why no matter how much I was against the election of (then Senator) Obama I could at the very least be genuinely glad that finally we had elected an “African-American” (in quotes because his background and ethnicity are atypical) as president. Finally!
So the election of a “black President” just may indeed foster a new “openness” toward America toward Americans and by extension toward the Christian faith. (“By extension” in the sense that when Christian Americans speak with people from or in other nations – those persons might be more receptive to what these Americans have to share. I categorically reject the notion that we are a “Christian nation” or that the purpose of America is to spread the Christian faith.) It is less likely that people in or from other nations will say “why should I listen to what a racist American from a racist America has to say?”
Now we may ask legitimately if there is any hard evidence that any of this is true. Do we have hard evidence that “foreigners” (of course we are the foreigners when we visit other nations) were less open to Americans and to the Christian faith of Americans before the election of President Obama? and are now more open because of the election of President Obama? Or is this all supposition and imagination and fantasy?
