The American Spectator

Perhaps, but only the gullible would ignore that the fact that Obama was also an ambitious young politician and Rev. Wright was a well-connected and charismatic Chicago leader.

THE BOOK’S WEAKEST chapter deals with Obama and his relationship with Wright. One gets the distinct impression that the bulk of the book was written before their falling out and sections had to be hastily rewritten.

Mansfield cites as proof of Obama’s dedication to Trinity and its message that “he initially stayed.” Obama “initially” weathered the political storm because “he had found a faith, a people, the vessel for belief that he had longed for.”

Trinity, you see, “had become the font of his political vision” and helped to frame his “sense of professional calling.”

Maybe. But it wasn’t so fundamental that Obama couldn’t drop Trinity like a bad habit after Wright’s infamous National Press Club appearance. Mansfield simply blames it all on Wright and assures us that the decision “came with sadness, with grief for the loss of years and the pain that politics presses into private life.”

Despite all of this Mansfield concludes with a glimpse into the brighter future that awaits us: “One can imagine, in an Obama presidency, White House conferences on Faith and Poverty or Religion’s Responses to Racism that are more than time-wasting mockeries of national ills.”

Yes, that is a hopeful vision. One might even call it… audacious.