![]() ![]() Raised in the Midwest by two lapsed Christians, she lived and traveled throughout the world appreciating all religions but confessing to none. The story of Obama's faith begins with his mother, Ann. "I leave open the possibility that I'm entirely wrong." "I'm on my own faith journey and I'm searching," he says. He found Christ-but that hasn't stopped him from asking questions. Always drawn to life's Big Questions, Obama embarked on a spiritual quest in which he tried to reconcile his rational side with his yearning for transcendence. It's one of a seeker, an intellectually curious young man trying to cobble together a religious identity out of myriad influences. The story of Obama's religious journey is a uniquely American tale. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, almost half of the respondents say Obama shares at least some of Wright's views nearly a third say Wright might prevent them from voting for the presumptive Democratic nominee. Jeremiah Wright Jr., the preacher who was seen damning America on cable TV for weeks last spring-and will doubtless be seen again this fall. The senior pastor at Trinity at the time of Obama's baptism was the Rev. 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. But rumors about Obama's religion persist. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. 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. Obama's religious biography is unconventional and politically problematic. ![]() In some respects, his reticence is understandable. 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. ![]() Obama has spoken often and eloquently about the importance of religion in public life. "There were times that I would just start tearing up listening to the choir and share that sense of release." "I'd just sit in the back and I'd listen to the choir and I'd listen to the sermon," he says, smiling a little as he remembers those early days in the wilderness. When he felt restless on a Sunday morning, he would wander into an African-American congregation such as Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Obama meditated on these men and argued with them in his mind. There was Graham Greene, the Roman Catholic Englishman whose short novels are full of compromise, ambivalence and pain. There was Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century German philosopher and father of existentialism. There was Saint Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop who wrote the West's first spiritual memoir and built the theological foundations of the Christian Church. Often, he'd go days without speaking to another person.įor company, he had books. I withdrew from the world in a fairly deliberate way." He fasted. In New York City, "I lived an ascetic existence," Obama told NEWSWEEK in an interview on his campaign plane last week. He enrolled at Columbia in part to get far away from his past he'd gone to high school in Hawaii and had just spent two years "enjoying myself," as he puts it, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He was torn a million different ways: between youth and maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. ![]() In 1981 Barack Obama was 20 years old, a Columbia University student in search of the meaning of life. ![]()
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