How politically gullible are many evangelical Christians today? Recent efforts to manipulate the conservative and the WOKE base appear to be glaringly obvious so we might at least assume that the most dedicated progressive political operatives think we are virtually clueless.

Who is Michael Wear? According to Wear’s website for his “Reclaiming Hope” initiative, he is former president Barack Obama’s “Ambassador to America’s Believers.”

Reclaiming Hope Newsletter President Obama’s “ambassador to America’s believers” provides exclusive analysis of the 2020 presidential race, a recap of the essential news in faith and politics, highlights must-read content

In this article at The Gospel Coalition, Greg Forster writes in praise of Michael Wear,

Wear is an evangelical Christian whose faith led him to seek justice and mercy in the world, and he sees that fulfilled through his work as a progressive Democrat. But he also longs to overcome polarization and find ways to work with conservative Republicans—including a candid assessment of our persistent disagreements—in order to move forward together toward the justice and mercy we all seek.

MICHAEL WEAR’S PROGRESSIVE FAITH AND WORK AMONG CONSERVATIVES 

On Wear’s website, his bio states,

Michael Wear is Chief Strategist for the AND Campaign and is the Founder of Public Square Strategies LLC. He is a leading expert at the intersection of faith, politics, and American public life. As one of President Obama’s “ambassadors to America’s believers” (Buzzfeed), Michael directed faith outreach for President Obama’s historic 2012 re-election campaign. Michael was also one of the youngest White House staffers in American history, working in the Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Michael is author of Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America, and he is often published or quoted in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, USA Today and more.

Wear is a political animal who makes his living at the highest levels of progressive politics and working with The Gospel Coalition. He is billed at “President Obama’s ambassador to America’s believers” … And works for Tim Keller’s TGC

MICHAEL WEAR’S BLOG PROVIDES “EXCLUSIVE ANALYSIS OF THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL RACE” — WHILE HE STILL WORKS FOR THE GOSPEL COALITION?

“Reclaiming Hope Newsletter President Obama’s “ambassador to America’s believers” provides exclusive analysis of the 2020 presidential race, a recap of the essential news in faith and politics, highlights must-read content”

Michael Wear recently came on a podcast called Church Politics to discuss the backstory and support of the AND Campaign’s 2020 Presidential Election statement that promotes LGBTQ rights and downplays the sin of abortion to merely “not a social good” that should be replaced with free healthcare and other government welfare.

In a recent story published at Business Insider, Obama laid into young people being ‘politically woke’ and ‘as judgmental as possible’ in a speech about call-out culture,

Former President Barack Obama derided “call-out culture” in a speech at the Obama Foundation Summit on Tuesday, saying achieving real change was more complex than being “as judgmental as possible.”

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly,” Obama told a crowd in Chicago.

He added: “I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, that the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that’s enough.”

“Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because: ‘Man, did you see how woke I was? I called you out.’”

“The world is messy,” the 44th US president said. “There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and, you know, share certain things with you.”

“That is not activism,” he concluded. “That is not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you are probably not going to get that far.”

WOKE EVANGELICALS AND TGC

In an article at The Gospel Coalition titled Woke Is…, Thabiti Anyabwile writes,

First, being “woke” isn’t at all new. I know Carl Ellis has been trying to help people understand that in some of his public talks. But it seems a lot of younger people think they’re experiencing something new. Solomon taught a long, long time ago, “there’s nothing new under the sun.

MICHAEL WEAR LECTURE

Wears snappy screen quote is a bit ironic since HE has found his HOME both in the Obama camp AND in The Gospel Coalition.

This is what it looks like when the most progressive President in US history speaks as the voice of concern to ill-informed conservative evangelicals over #WOKE . Lesson Obama’s long-time faith outreach guy Michael R Wear now works for TGC.

In fact, the Obama comments were not directed at young WOKE evangelicals but were on the stage of his Foundation’s event and the WOKE  young evangelicals are avid consumers of left-wing news outlets. It goes without saying Obama is playing to the self-identified” Woke ” and to those concerned about it in the conservative and evangelical community.

GREG FORSTER AND TGC IN PRAISE OF WEAR IN PRAISE OF OBAMA 

In Greg Forster’s article at The Gospel Coalition (cited above), Forster continues to praise Michael Wear and his progressive political activism,

This book helped answer a question I and many others have long wrestled with: Why do people love Barack Obama? The admiration of Obama is hard to understand for those of us who have been on the receiving end of his untruths and broken promises, of IRS investigations designed to shut us down illegally, and many other abuses of power. We could see through the “hope and change,” “yes we can” nonsense; why didn’t they?

Wear shows that Obama did exceptionally well one of the most important jobs we rely on our political leaders to do: use words to express publicly our national commitment to justice and mercy. One reason America is going south in a handbasket is because very, very few of our political leaders are able to do this well. For those who paid more attention to him than people like me did, Obama did this job masterfully.

Unlike most political memoirists, Wear is often delightfully self-aware about his own foibles and those of his colleagues. (At one point he and other volunteers on a long car trip pass the time by singing together; after they sing a somewhat risqué song, one remarks: “This is exactly how Republicans imagine a Democratic faith outreach operation.”)

Wear’s defenses of Obama’s decisions are sometimes surprisingly persuasive. I didn’t expect to be convinced that it was good Christian prudence for the Obamas not to become members of a local church in Washington. I’m just about as militant a churchman as you’ll find, but I was persuaded by Wear’s case that a modern president brings through the door with him problems and complications sufficient to severely hamper the worship and community of any congregation he enters.

Nonetheless, Wear is what the nation needs more of, because the nation can have no moral consensus—no shared basis for doing justice and mercy together—if religion is only welcome in one political party. And he’s what the church needs more of, because the church can’t effectively bear witness for justice and mercy—which it must do in order to preach a gospel of justice and mercy!—if all the faithful Christians are in one political party. My judgment that conservatism (to the small extent it’s still a meaningful word) is preferable to progressivism is far less important than the undeniable fact that what the nation and the church need most is a moral consensus that transcends polarization.

HARD TO BELIEVE TGC  / OIKONOMIA’S BOSS WOULD BE THIS OBVIOUS?

Tim Keller was equally as obvious from his 2012 meetings in “goof faith” and April 2011 at Obama’s White House for breakfast.

“See the white bald guy on the right bottom corner? Yeah that’s my pastor:-),” the writer of this blog states.

EXPECT MUCH MORE TO COME FROM THE COLLABORATION OF OBAMA’S FAITH AMBASSADOR TO BELIEVERS  AND  THE GOSPEL COALITION OF TIM KELLER  AS THE 2020 ELECTION CYCLE HEATS UP. 

Don’t be surprised if young couples in your church and your children are buying in. Greg Forster’s bosses and whoever else is funding TGC have plenty more where this all came from.

Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from Thomas Littleton’s research article at Thirty Pieces of Silver and reposted/edited here with permission.