Joe Carter, Freddie de Boer, Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher have all commented on Obama’s Christianity. Since this is ground I have covered a little before, I thought I might add a few points. Rod and Carter are correct that by any formal, credal standard of traditional Christianity in any confession, Obama is heterodox. It is important to distinguish this from the more loaded question of whether or not he is a Christian. It is relatively easy to demonstrate heterodoxy, but more difficult to show non-Christianity, and this is as it should be.

There are Christians whom the Orthodox and Catholic Churches consider heterodox, but who nonetheless affirm certain central truths about Christ; heterodox doctrines are typically definitions related to these truths that the Church has found to be false in some important way. Since at least 1283, the Orthodox Church has held that Catholics are in error concerning the Filioque, so by an even stricter standard Orthodox would regard anyone who confessed the post-Seville (589)amended Nicene Creed, including many Protestants, to be at odds with the consensus patrum. However, there is no question that Orthodox regard Catholics, Protestants, non-Chalcedonians and Assyrians as Christians, and generally speaking they view us in the same way.

Raising the question of whether Obama is orthodox within this much broader definition–the “Great Tradition” definition that ecumenically-minded people like to use–makes more sense if we are interested in categorizing a great many other liberal Protestants in the same way. For many theologically conservative Protestants, especially those within the denominations where liberal theologies hold sway, this is all old news. Our longsuffering Episcopal friends have been confronted with these problems for decades. But this is where things get thornier. At what point do heterodox Christians lose all claim to the name? In a polemical reading of Obama’s statement concerning Christ, you might be able to make out a kind of semi-Arianism; on the other hand, his statement about Christ serving as a “bridge” might be a rather sloppy way of saying that He is Mediator and Redeemer. If he were semi-Arian in his theology, would we credit semi-Arians with the label of Christian? We might not, but we would need to have a good deal more information about Obama’s views before we take the step of applying that conclusion to him. If Obama were not a Christian, what would it mean to say that there are Christian UCC members in communion with non-Christian UCC members?

If we are going to take these definitions seriously, we should likewise be concerned to investigate the theological views of Mormon politicians and hold them to the same standard. Were we to do so, every serious Mormon so investigated would fail the test being applied to Obama, and he would fail it more spectacularly, and indeed he would have to fail if he were to be faithful to his own church’s teachings. I have made clear in the past that I think the devaluing of Christian doctrine that the pro-Romney ecumenist argument represented was deeply misguided–the idea was that so long as we shared the same “values” different confessions of faith are irrelevant in the political sphere. This is a pernicious idea for much the same reason that I find “Abrahamic” ecumenism pernicious, but it is one that Romney’s defenders advanced on a regular basis. According to the ecumenists, if Mormons held themselves out as Christians it was neither here nor there. We were routinely informed that Mormons claimed that they were, so that ought to be that.

The debate over the relationship between conservative Mormons and Christians is a good example of the distinction between theological and cultural conservatism that James has made many times in the past. (An aside: “theocons” are not always necessarily theological conservatives in this way, which is why I find that label misleading in the extreme.) The cultural conservative is likely to see shared “values” as far more important than shared theology, because the cultural conservative has already given up to a large extent on doctrine and theoria and has become obsessed with praxis. In this view, there are works over here, which are what matter, and faith is over there, tucked away a private nook where no one should look too closely. This emphasis on “values” is at the root of so-called “ecumenical jihad”–the tactical alliances between Muslims and Christians on social issues–and can be seen again in the irony that the LDS church helped put Proposition 8 over the top despite the anti-Mormon attitudes of many theologically conservative Christians who were also pro-Prop. 8 cultural conservatives.

Ultimately, the inquiry into Obama’s faith does not tell us much that we didn’t already know, which is that he is a liberal Protestant with an accordingly poor grounding in theological orthodoxy. I have to wonder how much power this critique has unless it is made as part of a general argument for theological conservatism in public life. Would cultural conservatives be open to this kind of critique when it is one of theirs being criticized, or would they repeat the arguments marshalled in defense of Romney?