PUBLIC VIEWPOINT Comfortable With Obama’s Christianity

Friday, January 11, 2013

Hiram Cooper (Public Viewpoint, Jan. 4) is alarmed about the results of the recent election, believing that we are losing our country to nonbelievers. I take this to be a reference to President Obama, who is a longtime member of the United Church of Christ, the denomination in which I was trained for ministry 45 years ago. When we compare the two candidates in the recent election, we see that the president’s Christian credentials meet or exceed the Christian credentials of his opponent. I am impressed with President Obama’s understanding of Christian theology. Since I have been a pastor for half a century, I pay close attention to such things.

Our president shares with me and many of us an admiration for Reinhold Niebuhr, who was the most influential American Protestant theologian of the last century.

I rest confident in the Christian values that our president embraces and on which he acts. I would much rather live by the “Christian realism” of Reinhold Niebuhr than by Fox News conspiracy theories.

SANDY WYLIE

Bella Vista

WALMART NEEDS SCRUTINY

Walmart’s business practices in the developing world need to come under a microscope.

When asked if they employ workers under sweatshop conditions, naturally they reply that they do not.

However, watchdog groups fanatically insist that the supply chain that feeds us and populates the furniture of our homes is working long hours, for bitterly little pay, with other restrictions that we wouldn’t tolerate at our work. Furthermore, those jobs leave a vacuum in the US that lay off our workers.

Is America supporting neo-fascism? I think so. It is time Walmart went under careful scrutiny.

SETH LEONARD

Blacksburg, Va.

Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/11/2013