Almost every American with a television or access to the internet has been exposed to stories questioning the sincerity of President Barack Obama’s Christian faith. According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center, those indentifying President Obama as a Christian have declined from 51% in October of 2008 to 34% in August of 2010. During that same time period, those labeling him a Muslim have risen from 12% to 18%. Among those who state that President Obama is a Muslim, 60% say they learned about his religion from the media, which speaks to the prevalence of misinformation.
Lifeway Research conducted a survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors during the month of October. One question from that survey is of particular interest: “Which, if any, of the following people do you believe are Christians?”
So What?
Only 41% of Protestant Christian pastors rightly identified President Obama as Christian. According to Ed Stetzer, Director of Research and Missiologist in Residence at Lifeway, this number is explained by how these respondents understood the question:
For many people, “Christian” is a box they check on a demographic survey. . . Protestant pastors, however, often have a more detailed view – many apply terms like “born again,” “evangelical” and “a changed life” as synonyms for “Christian.” Thus, their standard is often different than the prevailing view. . . Using their standard, the majority would not agree that President Obama is a Christian, though he is a mainline Protestant.
Stetzer’s explanation is supported by the data, which shows that 88% of pastors who identify their political ideology as “liberal” or “very liberal” believe President Barack Obama is a Christian, compared to 66% of “moderates,” 31% of “conservatives.” and 12% of “very conservatives”.
For those who are not sure what to think or how to label Obama’s faith I encourage you to consider both his words and his life. In September at a backyard town hall in Arizona, President Obama addressed this topic directly:
I’m a Christian by choice. My family didn’t — frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church.
The president said he “came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead — being my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me. And I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we’re sinful and we’re flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace.”