A couple weeks back I wondered how much of the current outspoken opposition to health-care reform is related to race and racism.  At least one commenter thought I was off base, that focusing on race misses the actual concerns of those opposed to President Obama’s proposed reforms.

Not one debate I heard from anyone opposing him referred to the president’s race. His defenders are the only ones using the race issue to obscure and dismiss legitimate complaints and questions raised by the proposed legislation. It’s not whitey fearing the black man it’s citizens cringing in fear of the loss of freedom due to a huge unconstitutional intervention by the federal government.

Not that he’ll ever read this blog, but if he did David Brooks would likely agree with this comment’s sentiment.  In a recent New York Time op-ed Brooks claims the while the vocal backlash to health-care reform may have racial elements, it is better understood through a populist lens.

Barack Obama leads a government of the highly educated. His movement includes urban politicians, academics, Hollywood donors and information-age professionals. In his first few months, he has fused federal power with Wall Street, the auto industry, the health care industries and the energy sector.

Given all of this, it was guaranteed that he would spark a populist backlash, regardless of his skin color. And it was guaranteed that this backlash would be ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top — since these movements always are, whether they were led by Huey Long, Father Coughlin or anybody else.

And yet.  So much of the angry and frightened language coming from those opposed to the president’s proposed reforms is tapping into issues of race.  There are surely elements of populism in these protests but does this overrule the obvious expressions of racism?

Writing for Religion Dispatches last week, professor Johnathan Walton asserts that it is the president himself- less than his policies- that has provoked such fear among the president’s white opponents.

This is why, it would seem, Barack Obama’s body standing behind the American presidential seal has a critical segment of America losing its hold on reality—a reality, I would argue, few have ever been forced to acknowledge up to this point. Whether it’s the birthers, tea-baggers, deathers, indoctrinators, or “You lie!”-ers, they have neither veiled their racial animus nor cloaked their white nationalism. The prevalence of racist images of President Obama brandished by protesters juxtaposed with calls of “taking our country back” are reminiscent of D.W. Griffith’s fictional America as depicted in Birth of a Nation. And the pride with which this segment of society has rallied the troops around its shared sense of whiteness reveals that their skin color is the one true object of pledged allegiance and determinant of professed patriotism.

So which is it?  Is it a simple coincidence that those most opposed to the president’s proposed reforms are white?  Or, as Walton claims, is there something troubling about the way this public debate has devolved?

From my vantage point there have been too many examples of racially-charged commentary to ignore.  While it is entirely appropriate to oppose this president’s policies based on one’s politics, the ugly rhetoric by those like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh make it important to distance one’s political opinion from those who peddle fear.

I continue to wonder whether Christians in American can transcend (or subvert) the way health-care reform has been debated thus far.  For those with nothing to fear but a loving God, how might an issue as complex as this one be discussed?  I’m not sure we’ve seen the church in America rise to this significant occasion.  Will we?