THE MICHIGAN CHRONICLE
August 24, 2011

FORMER WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON PENS EPILOGUE FOR BOOK ON OBAMA AND CHRISTIANS

It’s been called a trendsetter in the history of presidential book publishing as Global Mark Makers (www.globalmarkmakers.com) publishing group in Iowa, announces a six-part series on the Obama presidency written by Bankole Thompson, senior editor of the Michigan Chronicle, and the selection of Bob Weiner, former White House spokesperson during the Bill Clinton administration, to write the epilogue to the second title of the series “Obama and Christian Loyalty,” due in October of this year.

Weiner, former press secretary at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Clinton administration, said, “I am honored to be invited to write the epilogue to Bankole Thompson’s latest book on religion and politics. The abuse of religion by the right is scary for America. God belongs to no party and no candidate. Claiming religious principles for ‘life’ but cutting programs for the poor is about as far from the point of religion as one can be.”

Weiner added, “Rick Perry’s recent pray-in days before his presidential campaign ‘announcement’ and then saying Social Security and Medicare violently violate the Constitution, and Michele Bachman’s revealing that she supposedly makes all her decisions based on her religion while she wants to take health care from those who now have it, show the danger of allowing abuse of the mantle of religion.”

Weiner, who recently was the director of the Daily Press Briefing Room at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, served as a top aide and spokesman to a litany of Washington political figures including the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, Congressmen Charles Rangel, John Conyers, Ed Koch and Claude Pepper.

“Bob Weiner is no doubt a man with remarkable experiential insight into the intersection of faith, politics and governance and how such dynamic intersection affects America’s mainstream and middle class,” notes Global Mark Makers CEO C. Paschal Eze.

The interview-based book, the prologue of which is written by Bishop P.A. Brooks, First Assistant Presiding Bishop of the Church of God in Christ Inc., is scoring the opinions of Christians about President Obama’s performance in office across a myriad of issues. The book examines the politics of the evangelical right and explores an important question: If President Obama were White, would anyone in the evangelical right question his faith?

Individuals from around the country interviewed in the book include Rogelio Orta of the Latino Christian Business Network, Hyepin Im of the Korean Churches for Community Development, Christian author TN Williams, education advocate Dr. Brenda Lewis, attorney Kathleen Weidner, a self-described “recovering Catholic,” Cordell Uzonwanne an IT consultant, Republican strategist Paul Welday, and Bishop Charles Ellis, Presiding Bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (PAW), among others.

The remaining titles in Thompson’s six-part series on the Obama presidency include “Obama and Jewish Loyalty (January 2012), “Obama and Black Disloyalty: Deconstructing Prominent Blacks Against Obama” (April 2012), “Obama and Hispanic Loyalty” (July 2012) and “Obama and American Loyalty” (October 2012).

“The uniqueness of the Obama book series lies not only in the fact that it is in six parts, all published within four years of a historic presidential administration and written by one author, but also the fact that it is interview-based, sourcing meaningful ideas from people both from at the top and middle of society, different ethnic ecologies and political persuasions,” Global Mark Makers said.

Bishop Brooks, in the prologue to “Obama and Christian Loyalty,” said, “The test of true Christian loyalty lies is in the one’s devotion to God and humanity that ‘Christianess’ is proved. For this reason, I am so thankful for the scope of this book.”

The book will be launched Nov. 12 in Detroit.

Thompson’s previous book was titled “Obama and Black Loyalty, Vol. 1.”