Just days ago, Barrack Obama articulated to a San Francisco audience a succinct explanation of the difficulties he has had in galvanizing Pennsylvania voters. The working-class and middle-class residents of Main Street, U.S.A., Obama said, hold a worldview that is, ultimately, the product of “bitterness” and “frustration.” Because of the exodus of “jobs” from their communities, middle Americans “cling” to their beliefs in God and the Second Amendment, and they have “antipathy” toward everyone, citizen and non-citizen alike, who is different from them.

“And it is not surprising then [that] they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment….”

Notice, the worldview that is the subject of Obama’s attention is not one that he shares. Beyond this, it is a worldview to which he has always been and remains staunchly, even vehemently, opposed. In word and deed, Obama’s record will reveal his consistency on this score. We know that he is a stalwart proponent of both gun control and de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants, for instance, and his choice of words alone to describe the positions of those with whom he disagrees over these matters discloses further the contempt with which he views them: that “small town” Americans who enthusiastically avail themselves of their Second Amendment rights means that they “cling to their guns”; that they resent “affirmative action,” say, or that they may be reluctant to vote for Barack Obama, means that they have “antipathy toward those who are aren’t like them;” and that they have a deep concern that our current immigration policies threaten to undermine the communities and the country into which they have invested their lives, means that they are “anti-immigrant.”

When Obama attributes these beliefs to a justified, but misdirected, “bitterness” -- it is toward “greedy” corporations that white Americans should direct their frustrations -- he inescapably implies that they are the offspring of ignorance. Yet this is precisely the sort of condescension to which the legitimate concerns of white working-class Americans have been subjected for at least all of my lifetime. In one swift stroke, Obama dismisses as “bigotry” the convictions, the hopes, and the fears of the white working and middle classes. In so doing, he proves himself enthralled to the invidious racial orthodoxy that dominates our culture, a frame of reference within which the grievances of whites are systematically denigrated while those of non-white groups are affirmed.

That his comments toward “small town America” have a racial subtext is questionable only for those who refuse to listen to them. There is another aspect of his remarks, however, that, in spite of the proliferation of commentary that has sprung up this week, no analysis, to my knowledge, has addressed. The question that has yet to be asked is this: why would Obama include “religion” within the constellation of misguided, indeed, pathological, beliefs in terms of which he “profiles” working class white Americans?

Obama has repeatedly affirmed his commitment to Christianity. During the most recent Democratic debate in Philadelphia, he insinuated the ridiculousness of the charge that he, a person of faith, would deliberately insult other people of faith. Yet the fact remains that he lumped “religion,” the Christian faith of his white brethren, not with, say, love of family, love of community, and love of country, but with things for which he clearly has nothing other than, well, antipathy: the readiness with which the residents of “small town America” embrace their Second Amendment rights and their bigotry toward the Other -- non-whites and Hispanic immigrants. What are we to make of this?

I don’t pretend to know exactly, but I would suggest two possible theses that may be worth exploring. It may be the case that Obama doesn’t really take the {link url=http://christianity.about.com/]Christian faith[/link] that he professes very seriously. He aspires to be the President of a country the overwhelming majority of whose citizens always have been and remain Christian. Unless he has them believe that he shares their faith, his prospects for success are nil.

There is another option, though, which I believe is more plausible. Obama is indeed a Christian, but a black Christian. That is, the theology that he endorses has developed as a response to the distinctive (even if not unique) needs and concerns of blacks. White Christians, especially those white Christians who “cling” to their religion, along with their guns, antipathy toward non-whites, and “anti-immigrant sentiment,” are both unresponsive to the problems besetting black America, as well as largely responsible for them. That Obama lists Christian faith first in this litany of pathologies plaguing white (“small town”) America might even suggest that he believes it is the pathology par excellence, the one that anchors the others.

This racially oriented explanation of Obama’s remarks, I am convinced, gives us greater cause for fear of an Obama presidency than the first one. If it is correct, then this would mean that the theology of the majority of his fellow American Christians is no less alien and repugnant to Obama than is the anti-American, anti-white Marxist-liberation theology of his church alien and repugnant to them.

This we must consider.