“Public Religion Research’s postelection poll indicates that Obama sharply improved on perceptions of the Democrats’ friendliness to religion,” wrote columnist William McKenzie. “Robert Jones, who heads the group, reports that 54 percent of voters saw Obama as friendly to religion, a 16 percent increase for Democrats from 2004.
“Also revealing is that more evangelicals are giving the new president a shot. About 40 percent say he shares their values and is friendly to religion. That number is impressive when you consider how reliably Republican most evangelicals have been.”
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- DavidB on Open thread 11/24
- parkay on Open thread 11/24
- donndublin on Open thread 11/24
- parkay on Open thread 11/24
- Pleefer on Open thread 11/24
- Pleefer on Open thread 11/24
- cosmos_originally on Open thread 11/24
- donndublin on Open thread 11/24
- donndublin on Open thread 11/24
- Regular on Open thread 11/24
46 Comments
I’m fine with Christians who practice their faith without trying to push it onto others. So this is encouraging. However I’m still quite angry at the numbers who oppose gay marriage.
Wow this is a surprise, in this topic is so many issues that people love to argue about. Obama, Religion and the Religious Right. Yet it is almost empty!
I pointed out once that Obama mentioned God more than McCain did and spoke of his faith more than McCain did. Obama did not speak of it as if it was a bargaining chip or in a way that seemed more an attempt to impress. But as a “dynamic faith”, there are several types of practiced religious faith.
One being “ fundamental faith” where it is thought that no matter what the question the answer is God.
Therefore no need to think or reason on the question or use their own ability to think or reason.
When God is always the answer then anything that does not fit into the answer is an attempt by the Devil to deceive.
“Dynamic faith” is the one where not all things are so black and white when it comes to the answer.
Life is not like a test where you receive all the answers before you receive the questions. God gave us many gifts and some are more troubling than simple to have. He gave us the ability to reason and think this to counter the blind path to all things. God is one path to the answer but not the only path to be considered in finding the correct path to an understanding. And that is what an answer is, to understand the question and the reasoning for it. Some question are not so important that the correct answer is important to have.
But others are so important that a simple answer is the worst path to follow. It takes understanding and thought to get the right answer to those questions.
I think another important subject to Wichitans related to Barack Obama is the connection of his mother’s family to the near downtown Wichita vicinity. And Barack is not necessarily accurate on his information in this regard.
I think Wichita has stronger connection to Obama’s geneology than Eldorado and Augusta.
For example, Barack mentioned in his book that he thought his mother, S. Ann Dunham, was born at a military base hospital after his father joined the military at the beginning of WWII. Some of us local historians now think he was born at Wichita’s St. Francis Hospital.
It also appears his mother’s parents lived in the Delano neighborhood near Seneca on Douglas and Maple at the beginning of WWII when Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born.
This is an interesting story that needs additional research. Does anyone have any personal anecdotes on this subject?
Jwink there has always been a sense of proud when ever someone makes it from here. Dee Wallace the actress is from here and Kristy Alley too. And I have the dubious honor of having been beaten up more then once by Don Johnson. It has to be more a honor to me then it would be to Johnson. I was eight years old and he was in High school I guess it could have been basic training for fighting the bad guys in Miami vice. But just how much of Obama’s character is due to a Wichita roots?
Writer Dog: Good comments. In fact, Kristi Alley took my seat at a local restaurant as I was leaving a few weeks ago. Sounds like your acquaintence with Don Johnson, a graduate of Wichita’s South High School, wasn’t too good.
Regarding Wichita’s influence on Barack Obama?? Barack, of course, never lived in Wichita and possibly was only in Wichita the time recently when he visited here in the presidential campaign.
The influence would have been from his wife’s parents in Hawaii who grew up in the Wichita area.
Funny, the other day I was talking with fellow church members about Obama. Most were busy with Church activities and simply said, “We have a Black president now” or “Yeah, he won didn’t he.”
That’s the extent of political talk in my Church. :D
God has a gap?
He didn’t mention anything to me about a gap.
Why was I not informed?
RP, Probably means you and He are doing just fine!
Dawg,
Vera Miles was from here too, although most of her bios skip lightly over that fact. Ginzberg described Wichita as the “Vortex of the Nation” where talent was born and spun off to the coasts. You’d be surprised at the number of well-known artists, writers and musicians who are former Wichitans.
Obama sounds like a preacher when he talks. Maybe that’s part of what’s so appealing about his speeches. Still, the right doesn’t have a lock on religious belief. It’s about time people realized that.
This just proves that Christianity isn’t a political party. I think what got Republican’s into trouble is all the politician’s were good a wrapping themselves in the flag while holding a bible while many did despicable things. Sitting in a pew a few Sunday’s a year and quoting the bible occasionally doesn’t make anyone a Christian.
Note: I see I made a rather significant error in my comments above at 6:45 AM. I meant to say “she” meaning Barack Obama’s mother, S. Ann Dunham, not “he.” The inadvertent “he” might lead someone to think that I meant Barack Obama himself might have been born here in Wichita at St. Francis Hospital. No, No, No.
I believe Barack Obama was born at the Women’s and Children’s hospital in Hawaii in 1961. I don’t think anyone knows if Barack and his mother ever came to Wichita or Kansas after his birth … I doubt it. Of course, Barack did visit Eldorado during his presidential campaign … I’m not sure what that was about.
Jed: To be a little more accurate about Vera Miles. She was originally from Boise City in the west Oklahoma panhandle. While still an early teen, young Vera and her parents moved to Pratt, Kansas, for a few years. Then in early high school, her mother brought Vera to Wichita where she graduated from North High School.
The year of 1948 proved significant for Vera. That year she was princess of the National Baseball Congress championship game at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium. She won the Miss Kansas contest. And she apparently won fourth place in the Miss America contest.
The story is that at the Miss America contest she was asked to present her acting talents. Vera supposedly told the judges that she had been to busy delivering telegrams in her job with Western Union so hadn’t had time to act in school plays.
But never the less, Vera left for Hollywood the next year and the rest of her amazing Hollywood career is history.
“JWink” –
Obama wrote that he’d visited his grandparents in El Dorado a few times during his childhood.
Wink,
Yeah, correct, but she did spend time here. One of the smaller facts is that she worked as a figure model at the Wichita Art Association for a while. I’ve seen some of the paintings. Several are pretty good!
I had the opportunity to meet Vera Miles when she was visiting her brother here. Nice lady.
Monkeyhawk: “Obama wrote that he visited his grandparents in Eldorado a few times during his childhood.” That’s what I’m not clear on. As far as I know, his mother’s parents who were his grandparents on his white Kansas side lived in Hawaii after Obama was born in about 1961 in Hawaii.
So who did Barack visit in Eldorado earlier this year? Perhaps someone from Eldorado can enlighten us? (And tell us if the proper spelling is Eldorado or El Dorado?)
As far as Obama’s Wichita connections pre-WW II, a number of historians are researching this.
Maybe he was referring to great grandparents?
And, of course, more study needs to be done on Barack Obama’s father, Barack Obama (senior) from Kenya. I believe he obtained a PhD but don’t know the area of his study. Was he related to the current Kenya co-president, Mr. Odinga of the Luo tribe. (I should check spellings here.) What did Barack Obama Sr. work at in Kenya before being killed in an automobile accident?
Perhaps someone will write an authoritative book on this side of Barack Obama’s family genealogy.
Linda: I agree with you … perhaps his great grandparents although they would be fairly elderly. Could any blogger explain this Eldorado connection?
RE: SC Kansans who became actresses:
Louise Brooks: the last word in Kansas actors (my opinion).
Cherryvale, fyi.
Hollywood is not only soulless, it is soul consuming. Brooks came more quickly than most to this obvious conclusion. She lit out for Germany in the late 20s and ended up making one of the most memorable pre-morals movies of all time, Pandora’s Box, for GW Pabst (of PBR fame). (If you can’t discern the lack of a contradiction in this statement, that Brooks got out of a moral cesspool to make a movie that deals frankly and honestly with human sexuality — taking human sexuality and its unself-conscious expression as natural — then that is not my problem and please, get a clue)
Ms Brooks was quite a female. It would have been an enormous pleasure to have known her at all, imo. To have known her in her prime would have been something, I’m sure.
And I do mean something.
Outlander: I believe Vera’s brother was known as the “Kansas Tornado” because of a boxing ability. I believe he passed away in the last year or so.
When did you meet Vera and what was the circumstances? Supposedly she only returned to Wichita a very few times for some reason.
Obama ancestry found here:
http://genealogy.about.com/od/aframertrees/p/barack_obama.htm
“[Louise] Brooks had retired from the screen that same year after completing one last film, the John Wayne western Overland Stage Raiders in which she played the romantic lead with a long hairstyle that rendered her all but unrecognizable from her “Lulu” days. She then briefly returned to Wichita, where she was raised. “But that turned out to be another kind of hell,” she said. “The citizens of Wichita either resented me having been a success or despised me for being a failure. And I wasn’t exactly enchanted with them. I must confess to a lifelong curse: My own failure as a social creature.”[2]
After an unsuccessful attempt at operating a dance studio, she returned East and, after brief stints as a radio actor and a gossip columnist,[14][15] worked as a salesgirl in a Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City for a few years, then eked out a living as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients.[16] Brooks unfortunately had a life-long love of alcohol (more specifically gin), having begun drinking heavily at the age of fourteen[17] and was an alcoholic for a major portion of her life, although she exorcised that particular demon enough to begin writing about film, which became her second life. During this period she began her first major writing project, an autobiographical novel called Naked on My Goat, a title taken from Goethe’s Faust. After working on the novel for a number of years, she destroyed the manuscript by throwing it into an incinerator.[18]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brooks#American_film_career
—
William Wellman offered her the role of Gwen Allen in Public Enemy, but she turned it down to be with George Marshall (owner of the Washington Redskins). She also rubbed shoulders with WR Hearst, Fatty Arbuckle, and just about anybody who was anybody in the pop culture world of the first half of the twentieth century.
Help me out here rock & roll lovers. Isn’t Mike Finnigan (sp?) from Wichita?
And BTW, it is Kirstie, not Kristy.
Dennis
Obama seems to have the ability to reach out and draw even those who disagree with him and didn’t support him into his circle…a great qualification for anyone trying to bring the country back together after so many years of division. I love his idea of having a grassroots movement of small community groups getting together to explore issues they care about and then making recomendations to his administration. What a wonderful way to get Americans involved in the rebuilding of our country. Looks like a “community organizer” is just what we needed. I think he’ll be a great leader.
As far as Obama’s Wichita connections pre-WW II, a number of historians are researching this.
Obama was born in 1960 or 61.
As far as I know he is. So is Joe Walsh, I think.
“Obama narrowed ‘God gap’ with GOP”
Yup. By pandering to the worst in people. I wonder how much more of that he will do?
It also appears his mother’s parents lived in the Delano neighborhood near Seneca on Douglas and Maple at the beginning of WWII when Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born.
That would have been just blocks from where I grew up on Dayton, about half a block west of West High. My mother’s parents lived there before we did. My uncle was born in the house across the street from that house, so my grandparents were in that area for many years. I think my uncle was born in 1929, although they did live in Wellington at some point before returning to live on Dayton. We frequented a pharmacy on the southwest corner of Seneca and Douglas. Paul Zonker was the owner. I don’t know how long it had been there, nor do I remember any others in that area at the time, which isn’t necessarily relevant. I was born in 1951, just so you have a reference date.
I do know some Dunhams, but not in Wichita. However, it wasn’t all that far from Wichita, and there’s always a very slim chance…
I’m sure you’ve checked old phone books, if you can find them. How far does the Polk directory go back? I was able to track my birthmother, who lived in Wichita the year I was born, but I was only looking for 1950 or so and beyond. It was a wealth of information, and they used to be available at the library. (You probably know all this, but just in case…)
Was St. Francis called St. Francis at that time? (I should haul out my Wichita history books and check, huh?) I only ask because St. Joseph was, at one time, the Wichita Hospital(?), before the Sisters of St. Joseph took over.
My grandparents have both been gone a long time. My dad, who was born in 1910 and knew tons of Wichita history, died in 1987, or I’d be asking him. He would know pharmacies, as he worked at Fox-Vliet, as did my mom. She passed away this past April, so I can’t check with her, even if she could have remembered. But my uncle is still living and might know something. He was in the same class with Vera Miles at North.
Nothing but trivia: One more “in Wichita”, unrelated to Obamas and Dunhams. Sinbad, the actor/comedian, studied acting in Wichita under Mary Jane Teall.
Yep on Finnegan. When Stephen Stills came to Wichita in 1981 (with Finnegan in his band), he commented that he started the show a little more nervous than usual because he knew “Mike’s people were out there.”
Thanks, Rage.
Dennis
So is Joe Walsh, I think.
Walsh’s adopted home is Cleveland, but he came back to Wichita to do a free concert for tornado victims once. As I recall, he did a joint news conference with Bob Knight.
P.S. Er, not free concert, benefit concert.
Mary,
“Looks like a “community organizer” is just what we needed. I think he’ll be a great leader.”
Amen!
We’ve been too long with a government that only needs us on April 15th and the first Tuesday in November. If we’re to have a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people,” the people need to be included in it. Our national community needs to get organized, not polarized!
Rage,
Didn’t Joe Walsh buy a house in College Hill a few years back?
You can go to Obama’s web site to sign up and be a part of the grassroots organization to get involved in a group that focuses on what you care about.
I say it time for all the whiners in this country to put their money, time, and effort where their mouth is and get involved if they really want things to change.
Like the old saying goes…”Are you part of the problem..or part of the solution?”
Dunno know about god, but Obama’s grandfather fought for the British in Malaysia during WW2 being promised that British Colonial rule would end and Keya would free. He was disappoited and angered at the barabric way Kenyans were still being treated by the white Brits even in the 50’s so he joined a freedom movement called “Shining Speer” led by Jomo Kenyetta. Their protests were convoluteted to horrible atrocities, baby killings, raping and mutilation of white women etc., by the racist British press who renamed the movement Mau Mau. Hussein Onyango Obama was captured and held prisoner and subjected to genital torture and daily whippings for two years. Kenyetta became the first PM of a free Kenya, but his followers including Obamas grandfather never forgave the British for their duplicity. Wonder how Barrack will get along with Brown?
Rage,
Didn’t Joe Walsh buy a house in College Hill a few years back?
I don’t know.
Rage,
Didn’t Joe Walsh buy a house in College Hill a few years back?
I don’t know.
++++++++++
He bought a house on Douglas – technically in the College Hill neighborhood. The house, I believe, belonged to his grandparents at one time.
I don’t know if he still owns it.
I remember that concert that Rage mentions – no small feat – heh… It was at the cotillian, right? At least some round place that looks a lot like it?
Bob Knight introduced Joe Walsh, as “a no ordinary, average guy.” I am sure someone wrote that line for him.
Somebody mentioned earlier in this thread that Barak’s wife’ parents lived in Hawaii. Michelle’s parents lived in Chicago; that was where she and her brother were raised. Her mom is still alive and will be moving to DC with the family to help look after her granddaughters. Michelle’s brother is a basketball coach at a major university in Oregon.
It is Barak’s grandparents who lived in Hawaii. He went there to see his grandmother one last time shortly before election day. She died the day before the election, I think. His mom died several hears ago in her 50’s, from cancer, if I remember correctly.
It is Kirstie, not Kristi.
Sinbad was stationed at McConnel AFB for awhile. He wasn’t originally from here. He did participate in Community Theater and probably other theatrical events while here.
I saw him on a train a few years ago. He got on in Los Angeles & was filmed doing a commercial for AmTrack in the car I was in. We all had to sit quietly and not move about in front of the tv camera during the filming.
Janeeyre: I thought I answered your comment but I don’t see it. In any event, I was refering to Barack’s mother, not his wife, Michelle, in my comments above. I don’t have any information about Michelle’s genealogy. Coincidentally, my long time girlfriend lived in Chicago and actually worked as a Chicago community organizer at one time. I don’t know if she knew Barack but I suspect she preceeded him.
Sursum: You mentioned Kenyetta of Kenya, Africa. Isn’t he still the co-president of Kenya? I should Google this to confirm. In any case, I believe Barack’s father was of the Luo tribe led by the other co-president, Mr. Odinga. Personally my impression is that Obama’s father would not be particularly inclined to follow Kenyetta but I need to brush up on this history.
Predestined: I am still researching Barack Obama’s white-side parents and grandparents here in the Wichita area. For that reason, I am hesitant to mention details because I am not yet clear on them.
But in your comments at 11:32 AM yesterday on this thread, you mentioned growing up near West High School on Dayton Street. Dayton, of course, runs east-west along the north side of West High School. Prior to building West High in 1954 and extending Highway 54 through there, a Santa Fe railroad branch line ran east-west through there approximately where Highway 54 is now. The railroad line was re-routed of course.
To get to my point about a Barack Obama connection, one of his mother’s grand parents lived on Dayton … the Harry Armour family at 726 Dayton from about 1947 to about 1957.
So, Predestined, did you or your relatives have a connection to this address?
Sursam: Correction: the current president of Kenya is Mwai Kibaki. Actually during the 1970’s, Mr. Kibaki worked under then President Kenyatta as finance minister of Kenya. About a year ago, Kenya suffered a kind of Civil War after a disputed election between Mr. Kibaki and his opposition, Raila Odinga. But finally, an agreement has been reached between the two opponents. Mr. Kibaki will serve as President and Mr. Odinga will serve as Prime Minister.
In my opinion, U.S. President-elect Obama might be related to Raila Odinga but I haven’t seen anything in writing on this yet.
Kenya is located in east central Africa and has been a tourist attraction and financially stable country over the years. A benchmark of stability for central Africa. Its people are very intelligent attested by Kenya University.
I do hope one of the benefits of an Obama presidency will be added stability in Kenya and Africa generally. Other countries are flooding Africa with technicians searching for natural resources to exploit.