BBC Documentaries

God Bless You Barack Obama? (2010x246)

Air date: Jan 25, 2010

Where did America's 44th president find religion? Was it the cynical move of an ambitious politician or a deep spiritual awakening? Theologian Robert Beckford takes a road trip across America retracing Barack Obama's journey from religious sceptic to devout Christian. The son of an African Muslim father and a white agnostic mother, Obama found God in the slums of Chicago, at the altar of one of America's most militant and controversial preachers, the Rev Jeremiah Wright. Beckford speaks to the people who helped Obama along his spiritual path, including former presidential candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. He also meets Jeremiah Wright, speaking for the first time since his former disciple's election. America's religious Right had claimed God for them. Beckford reveals how Obama adopted the precepts of black liberation theology and turned them into a winning manifesto that reached out to all Americans.