I subscribe to World Wide Religious News and an article appeared recently questioning whether Obama is a Christian. The discussion exemplified the usual confusion between what I call on my site the “Faithful” level of religion and the “Mystical” level.

An interview Barack gave to the Chicago Sun Times in 2004 was recently published on BeliefNet and apparently two bloggers Joe Carter and Rod Dreher read evidence in his comments that Obama’s claim to be a Christian must be false.

There were two main problems, which highlight for me anyway (and this is what I’m trying to share with my readers) the confusion that results from people not understanding the difference between two completely different levels of faith: what I I call the Faithful. level and the Mystical level.

At first, Joe Dreher apparently claimed that Obama denied the Nicene Creed because he called Jesus “a bridge between God and man” instead of clearly saying that he is the Son of God. Dreher wrote, “You cannot be a Christian in any meaningful sense and deny the divinity of Jesus Christ. You simply cannot.” Well, looking at the problem from a purely Faithful level, this is literally true. Those at the Faithful level say that Jesus was (is?) the Son of God. And if you insist on taking the word “son” literally, as the Faithful tend to do, then that would mean that you are accepting all the implications, including the biological ones, that a father/son relationship entails. This would include the assumption that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was pregnant by some magical means or else she had a very interesting night some nine months before Jesus was born.

Of course, Obama saying that Jesus is “a bridge between God and man” does not imply a specific biological relationship and would tend to upset Faithful-level believers. But nothing in his statement denies the divinity of Jesus Christ. However, from what I have been able to gather, Obama’s comments stem from a different level of belief that is not widely recognized in our society. Not that I consider it appropriate to judge someone for what he believes, but since some hope to “catch” poor Barack as guilty of some form of false faith, I offer a different opinion. From what I have been able to deduce, I believe that Obama is on the mystical level of faith (4). Ultimately, this means that he belongs to a very diffuse group where, among many other characteristics, the metaphorical interpretation of religious concepts is common. So for a mystic, saying that Jesus is the “Son of God” is really no different than saying that he is a “bridge between God and man.” In fact, by using the word “god,” the mystic may not even be referring to a separate literal being. He may be referring to an entity from which man is apart. Therefore, saying that Jesus is a bridge between God and man can be a way of saying that following the example of Jesus can bring us closer to the part of divinity that should exist within each of our human souls, not denying the divinity of Christ but uniting it, including it within something to which every human being has potential access. Which brings us to the next point.

The World Wide Religion News article I mentioned earlier claims that blogger Joe Carter took issue with Obama saying that he doesn’t think people who haven’t embraced Jesus as their personal savior will automatically go to hell. “I can’t imagine my God would allow a Hindu child in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup.” Well, if Obama is indeed a Christian on the mystical level, he would not choose to see himself as part of an elite group from which everyone else is excluded.

By means of a very vague generalization we can say that those of the Faithful group tend to interpret the concepts in an ethnocentric way: my religion, my political party, my country, my people. Therefore, they adopt a “triumphalistic” form of religion, a term I believe was coined by Father Thomas Keating. “Only my religion is correct.” So, as you can see, Obama is not in the Faithful group.

A mystic, on the other hand, seeks to include more beings, perhaps even non-humans, in his circle of interest. Unlike being ethnocentric, a mystic is perhaps worldcentric or even cosmocentric. Never the triumphalist, a mystic would not want to see any group of people excluded from whatever good our existence has to offer. He may interpret “eternal salvation” differently than the Faithful person does, but a mystic would not embrace a god or a worldview that would allow “a little Hindu boy in India who never interacts with faith Christian will somehow burn for all eternity. .”

A certain proportion of the membership of almost all religions and all churches is made up of people on the mystical level of faith. Less articulate and not in the public eye like Obama, they go unnoticed by the generally more vociferous Faithful. The question should not be so much “Is Obama a Christian?” He calls himself a Christian and that should be all that is required. Rather, my question is, “Can Faithful-level Christians widen the doors of their clique to openly welcome someone whose faith includes everything theirs does, and more? Can they widen the windows of their hearts to allow a worldview and a position of faith that includes the exact beliefs they now hold, but which, in the difference between literal and metaphorical semantics, includes a god who would leave no one out in the cold?”