THE FAITH OF BARACK OBAMA

As author and narrator, Stephen Mansfield discusses how President-Elect Barack Obama’s politics and religion are intertwined. He first recounts Obama’s upbringing by an atheist mother and Muslim father in an attempt to portray Obama’s search for meaning as a young man. With careful pacing and understatement, he describes Obama’s rise from a self-described “skinny kid with a funny name” to a politician with rock-star status, illustrating with vivid descriptions Obama’s sudden emergence from relative obscurity into the national political arena. He also addresses Obama’s association with Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his “liberal leftist” church with the intent to place it within a sociological context. Mansfield depicts Obama’s genuine anguish regarding the conflict that arose over his former mentor. Overall, Mansfield creates an interesting profile of Obama’s life and faith, the details of which were gleaned from an interview, but in the end one feels that the President-Elect is never personally revealed. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2008]