Most of this article is taken from http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/god-in-the-white-house/ unless otherwise noted.
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II
Raised in a secular household, Obama embraced Christianity after a spiritual awakening during his 20s. The sermons of Pastor Jeremiah Wright combined scriptural lessons with a call to social activism, which appealed to Obama, who was at the time a community organizer. Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.
Obama later described his decision: "I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life. It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn't suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth and carrying out His works."
In January 2008, Obama told Christianity Today: "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life." On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying "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. So I 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. (1)
Obama's personal religion became a topic of debate and speculation during the 2008 election campaign, when opponents suggested that Obama was either a Muslim because of his father's heritage or a racist Christian, based on some of the Rev. Wright's controversial sermons. During the campaign, Obama was ultimately forced to separate himself fully from the pastor, and he resigned his 20-year membership at Trinity.
As a candidate, Obama delivered the keynote speech at a conference organized by the liberal evangelical minister Jim Wallis. "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square," he said. "Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King -- indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history -- were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
In the same speech, Obama criticized the religious right and their argument of political issues. "I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons," he said, "but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all."
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#Cultural_and_political_image
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