President Obama addressed his profession of Christianity while speaking in India this week. Christian News Network reports that Obama was addressing religious pluralism to an auditorium of about 2,000 youth when he said that many people have doubted his Christian faith.
“In our lives, Michelle and I have been strengthened by our Christian faith,” Obama said. “But there have been times that my faith has at times been questioned by people who don’t know me or they’ve said I adhere to a different religion—as if that were somehow a bad thing.”
Obama said that India and the United States were strongest when citizens praticed tolerance of other religions.
“Our nations are strongest when we see that we are all God’s children—all equal in His eyes and worthy of His love,” he said.
“Across our two great countries, we have Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, and Jews and Buddhists, and Jains, and so many faiths. And we remember the wisdom of Gandhi, [who said], ‘For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree.'”
The President then said that Muslims who committed violent acts were going against their professed faith.
“Around the world, we’ve seen intolerance and violence and terror by those who profess to be standing up for their faith but are instead betraying it. No society is immune from the darkest impulses of men, and too often religion has been used to tap into those darker impulses as opposed to the light of God,” he said.
Publication date: January 30, 2015
