Via Huffington: Obama's Religion: Christianity 101 For The Willfully Ignorant

The flap about President Obama's religious affiliation reveals our national ignorance about religion in general and Christianity in particular. Here are some facts we ought to understand about Christianity before we go around rating the Christian character of Obama or anyone else:


1. Much is being made of Obama's childhood years in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Obama attended a Catholic School and later a public school that he has described as "Muslim" where the Quran was part of the curriculum.

Praying to saints in Catholic school didn't make Obama Catholic; praying with friends inside a mosque didn't make him a Muslim, either.

I visited Indonesia in 1968, right after the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. During a talk to high school students about life in America, one student asked me, "If America is a Christian nation, why are you killing your leaders?"

I responded then as I would now, adding a local cultural twist: "Being born in a garage does not make you a car, being born in a rice shelter does not make you rice, and being born in America does not make you Christian."

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