the audacity of hope

This is a blog written with my friend Ethnoquest very much in mind. Although it is the first it will not be the last on the subject of the American presidential election.

The American Presidency is at one of its lowest points in history. It is perhaps captured best by my Christmas shopping trip this evening to the Bull Ring shopping mall in Birmingham.

Looking for a suitable calendar for 2008 for our next door neighbour I came across a stall selling nothing else. And amid the calendars showing scenes of Britian, photos of your local football team, gorgeous girls and gorgeous blokes (!) was a calendar with a separate photo of George W Bush for each month of the year and with it a "Bushism" for the month showing his mastery of the mangling of the English language.

More seriously we either grind our teeth in frustration or stay open mouthed at the irony of three avowedly and certain Christian believers in Tony Blair John Howard and George Bush collectively between them providing more ammunition to turn off the mass of human kind from the gospel than a library of books written by Richard Dworkin and his cronies. I can only detect the master hand of Screwtape, and not even C S Lewis could have written this one.

I digress becuase this is just an introduction to a few words about Barak Obama, one of the democratic party contenders.

He is the kind of guy who comes along regularly oveer the years. Not part of the political establishment, inexperienced, easy to characterise as naive but for all that hugely attractive to all of those millions who are disillusioned by their feelings of being let down by politics and politicians. No doubt the cynics will say he will soon change if he is elected and has to make some hard choices and who can but remember the dizzy expectations here in 1997 when Tony B won his first election.

Barak has recently been gaining ground on Hilary Clinton in the democratic primary polls and I have to say that the thought of Hilary in the White House makes me go numb. And I just wonder what a remarkable thing it would be to have a non white President of the USA far more even than a woman President.

There is something of the Matt Santos in Barak (or is it the other way round) and we West Wing afficionados know what happened there.

And audacity of hope.........

It is the title of a book he wrote and is a phrase he borrowed from a minister of his church, the Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago.

Now that is my kind of language.

Hope has been a big big theme for me this year and not just hope but heart searching, God seeking, mind stretching audacious hope.

I'll drink to that this Christmas 2007.