Barack Obama Opens Up About His Religious Beliefs, Faith and His Spiritual Life on...

Barack Obama Opens Up About His Religious Beliefs, Faith and His Spiritual
Life on the Campaign Trail
Obama Says He Prays Daily for Forgiveness, Protection and Guidance

NEW YORK, July 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite the questions and persistent
rumors about his religion, Barack Obama is a Christian and prays each day. In
a recent interview for Newsweek's July 21 cover, "What He Believes" (on
newsstands Monday, July 14), Obama says that in his prayers he asks God for
forgiveness for his sins and flaws, the protection of his family, and "that
I'm carrying out God's will, and not in a grandiose way, simply that there is
an alignment between my actions and what he would want."
The presumptive Democratic nominee told Senior Editor Lisa Miller and
Senior White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe that as a 20-year-old Columbia
University student he was torn a million different ways: between youth and
maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. "I did a
lot of spiritual exploration. I withdrew from the world in a fairly deliberate
way," he says. On restless Sunday mornings, while living in New York, he would
wander into African-American congregations such as Abyssinian Baptist Church
in Harlem. "I'd just sit in the back and I'd listen to the choir and I'd
listen to the sermon," he says. "There were times that I would just start
tearing up listening to the choir and share that sense of release."
Obama's religious journey is a uniquely American tale. It's one of a
seeker, an intellectually curious young man trying to cobble together a
religious identity out of myriad influences. Obama embarked on a spiritual
quest in which he tried to reconcile his rational side with his yearning for
transcendence. He found Christ -- but that hasn't stopped him from asking
questions. "I'm on my own faith journey and I'm searching," he says. "I leave
open the possibility that I'm entirely wrong."
Obama has spoken often and eloquently about the importance of religion in
public life. But like many political leaders wary of offending potential
backers, he has been less revealing about what he believes -- about God, about
prayer, about the connection between salvation and personal responsibility. In
some respects, his reticence is understandable. Obama's religious biography is
unconventional and politically problematic. Born to a Christian-turned-secular
mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all
across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any
particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early
1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But rumors about Obama's
religion persist. In the new Newsweek Poll, 12 percent of voters incorrectly
believe he's Muslim; more than a quarter believe he was raised in a Muslim
home.
The story of Obama's faith begins with his mother, Ann. Raised in the
Midwest by two lapsed Christians, she lived and traveled throughout the world
appreciating all religions but confessing to none. One of Ann's favorite
spiritual texts was "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth," a set of PBS
interviews with Bill Moyers that traces the common themes of religion and
mythology, Obama's half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, tells Newsweek. When the
family lived in Indonesia, Ann would take the children to Catholic mass; after
returning to Hawaii, they would celebrate Easter and Christmas at United
Church of Christ congregations. Ann later went back to Indonesia with Maya,
and when Obama visited, they would take him to Borobudur, one of the largest
Buddhist temples in the world. "These kinds of experiences were a regular part
of our childhood and our upbringing, and were important to [our mother]
because they involved ritual," says Maya. "She thought that ritual was very
beautiful. The idea of human beings' striving to be better, having the
curiosity and questions about all these things, [was] perpetual and constant
inside her."
Obama's organizing days in Chicago helped clarify his sense of faith and
social action as intertwined. "It's hard for me to imagine being true to my
faith -- and not thinking beyond myself, and not thinking about what's good
for other people, and not acting in a moral and ethical way," he says. When
these ideas merged with his more emotional search for belonging, he was able
to arrive at the foot of the cross. He "felt God's spirit beckoning me," he
writes in his book "The Audacity of Hope." "I submitted myself to His will,
and dedicated myself to discovering His truth." The cross under which Obama
went to Jesus was at the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ led by
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. "That community of faith suited me," Obama says.
At the point of his decision to accept Christ, Obama says, "what was
intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive
power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could
achieve eternal life-but also that, through good works we could find order and
meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles
-- I found that powerful."
But Obama's faith is not without its critics. Some on the right say his
particular brand of Christianity is a modern amalgam-unorthodox,
undisciplined, even insincere. Last month Dr. James Dobson accused Obama of
"deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his
own world view, his own confused theology." The campaign responded that Obama
was reaching out to people of faith and standing up for families.
Since severing ties with Wright and Trinity, Obama is a little spiritually
rootless again. He lost a friend in Wright -- and he lost a home, however
tenuous those ties may have been toward the end, in Trinity. He has not found
a new church, and he doesn't plan to look for one until after the election.
"There's an aspect of the campaign process that would not make it a good time
to figure out whether a particular church community worked for us," he says.
"Because of what happened at Trinity, we'd be under a spotlight."
Nevertheless, his spiritual life on the campaign trail survives through
prayer and reading the bible. And although he and Michelle do not have a
systematic course of religious study for their daughters, "we say grace at the
table. They are inquiring minds, so whenever they have a question about God or
faith, then I have a conversation with them," he says. "I'm a big believer in
a faith that is not imposed but taps into what's already there, their
curiosity or their spirit."
(Read cover story at www.Newsweek.com.)

Cover: http://www.newsweek.com/id/145971
Interview: http://www.newsweek.com/id/145967
Poll: http://www.newsweek.com/id/145737

SOURCE Newsweek

Brenda Velez for Newsweek, +1-212-445-4078