Why 1 in 5 Americans are Wrong

White Christian Americans have always been a tad myopic. There is no wonder that a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll suggests that 1 in 5 Americans feel that Barak Obama is Muslim. I can't characterize the finding as Americans "thinking" that President Obama is Muslim. It is their myopia that stands in the way of thinking and leads people to feel instead.

Here is my point. Western culture is predisposed to view everything as a matter of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong, Christian and not Christian. Try this exercise yourself. A child is born. His mother is Caucasian and his father is Negro (please pardon my choice of words. Some Africans are white.) Is the child black or white?

Now change the father to Chinese. Is the child white or Chinese? The mother is Swedish Lutheran, the father an Orthodox Jew from the Ukraine. Is the child Jewish or Lutheran? The chances are that most of white Christian America will say: Black, Chinese and Jewish. How did you fare?

In the binary thinking of Western minds, if the child is less than all Caucasian the child is classified by the bloodline that is not Caucasian. Even one-quarter black is black. One-eighth. The converse of this heritage doesn't hold. A grandchild of three Sub-Saharan African grandparents and one Caucasian grandparent is not considered White. He may indeed by ostracized by his family and village for being of less than "pure blood."

It is no wonder that 20% of Americans think wrong about The President's religion. They look at African Muslims and see a resemblance to Mr. Obama. They see and hear his name with the Hussein emphasized and are lead astray. They see his skin color and the texture of his hair and can conclude only one binary thought: He's black, his name is odd and sounds Muslim. Must be Muslim. It's an easy mistake to make when you only have a Yes and a No choice to make. It's easy when one listens to only one source of information. To them, Muslim is an unalterable heritage like a strand of DNA, not a religion that one embraces through study, contemplation, and ritual attainment. It works that way in Christianity too. Calling yourself Christian doesn't make you one. It is in your thoughts, words and deeds and following the teaching of Christ that Christianity arises.