The never-clearing fog around Obama's religion
In February, Scott Walker, in response to a reporter's question, said he did not know if President Obama is a Christian. Controversy ensued, with pundits pressuring Walker to affirm that the president is in fact a Christian. Walker argued that voters looking to the 2016 presidential race don't care. The controversy eventually faded.
Now, Donald Trump is in the middle of a new edition of the controversy, having failed to correct an Obama-is-a-Muslim statement made by an unidentified participant in a New Hampshire town hall. Again, controversy has erupted, with pundits pressuring Trump to affirm that Obama is in fact a Christian.
The first thing Republican candidates should do when faced with the question — and they will be faced with it — is to say Obama is a Christian and a natural-born U.S. citizen. Then they should add that the question itself, while a near-obsession in some corners of the press, is not particularly important to today's voters. Finally, they should note that there has always been confusion around Obama's religion, for at least as long as he has been in national political life. And at this point, with Obama in his seventh year in the White House, that is likely not going to change.
This month CNN pollsters asked respondents, "Do you happen to know what religion Barack Obama is? Is he Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, something else, or not religious?" Overall, 39 percent said the president is Protestant, four percent said Catholic, one percent Jewish, two percent Mormon, and 29 percent said Muslim. One percent said Obama is something else, while 11 percent said he is not religious, and 14 percent said they had no opinion. (The numbers add up to 101 percent, presumably because of rounding.)
Start with the fact that 61 percent of those surveyed failed to give the correct answer identifying Obama as a Protestant. Among those who failed, the largest single group is the 29 percent who said Obama is a Muslim. Who are they?
More men (32 percent) said Obama is a Muslim than women (25 percent). More whites (33 percent) said he is a Muslim than non-whites (20 percent). More people 50 and older (34 percent) than under 50 (24 percent). More people who never attended college (36 percent) and make less than $50,000 a year (32 percent) than people who did attend college (23 percent) and make more than $50,000 (26 percent).
As far as political affiliation goes, 43 percent of self-identified Republicans in the poll said Obama is a Muslim, while an additional 10 percent said they had no opinion. Among independents, 29 percent said Obama is a Muslim, while an additional 16 percent said they had no opinion. And among Democrats, 15 percent said he is a Muslim, while an additional 14 percent said they had no opinion. (It's not clear what, if anything, the "no opinion" respondents know about Obama's religion; it probably would have been better had CNN given them a "don't know" option instead of "no opinion.")
Various polls over the years have found different results, but all have shown a significant number of Americans unable to correctly identify Obama's religion. The number includes more Republicans than any other group, but also includes a significant number from the president's own party. It seems unlikely that all of the 15 percent of Democrats, 29 percent of independents, and 20 percent of non-whites — groups that have supported Obama in the past — said he is a Muslim because they are right-wing hatemongers.
Indeed, the religion question popped up in Obama's life long before he became a politician. In the memoir Dreams From My Father, Obama described visiting a barber shop for the first time after moving to Chicago to become a community organizer. When the barber finished, he said, "Haircut's ten dollars. What's your name, anyway?"
"Barack," Obama answered.
"Barack, huh," the barber responded. "You a Muslim?"
"Grandfather was," Obama said.
It was a question that would arise often in Obama's career. And it is a question that he and his aides have sometimes dealt with in a contradictory way. Back in 2010, I wrote:
The White House blames the situation on a "misinformation campaign" from Obama's opponents. But Obama and his aides might also blame themselves for the way they've handled the Muslim issue over the years.
The question did not come out of nowhere. As Obama said, his grandfather was a Muslim. His father was raised a Muslim before becoming, by Obama's account, "a confirmed atheist." Obama's stepfather was a Muslim. His half-sister Maya told the New York Times that her "whole family was Muslim." Obama spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia and later, in a conversation with the Times' Nicholas Kristof, described the Arabic call to prayer, the beginning of which he recited by heart, as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset." Given all that, it is entirely accurate and fair to describe Obama as having Muslim roots.
Yet during the [2008] campaign his aides shouted down even a measured discussion of the topic, and Obama's critics could face ostracism simply for uttering the candidate's middle name. In December 2007, with the Iowa caucuses approaching, former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Hillary Clinton supporter, said of Obama, "I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal." Kerrey's remarks caused an uproar — one TV commentator wondered whether they were "poisoning the well" — and Kerrey later apologized.
Eighteen months later, when President Obama traveled to Cairo for a long-awaited speech to the Muslim world, the White House was saying, and the press was reporting, the same thing Kerrey had to apologize for. "President Obama is now embracing his Muslim roots," ABC News "Nightline" announced. "President Obama's speech was laced with references to the Quran and his Muslim roots," said USA Today. "Obama touched on his own Muslim roots," reported the Associated Press.
Do some low-information voters and non-voters mix up "Muslim" and "Muslim roots"? That wouldn't be surprising. Add to that the fact that Obama had to run away from his Chicago church of 20 years, Trinity United Church of Christ, when pastor Jeremiah Wright's angry sermons — "God damn America!" — became a controversial topic in the 2008 campaign. Add to that Obama's well-publicized sense, at the beginning of his presidency, that because of the influence of Islam in his background, he was uniquely qualified to connect with the Muslim world. Add to that Obama's enormous popularity among American Muslims; last year, Gallup found that the president enjoys a 72 percent approval rating with U.S. Muslims, compared to 59 percent with "other non-Christians," 55 percent with Jews, 54 percent with atheists, 44 percent with Catholics, 37 percent with Protestants, and 18 percent with Mormons. Add that all together, and it is not shocking that 61 percent of Americans polled would not know Obama's religion.
As far as going to church is concerned, Obama doesn't do it much. But many previous presidents, like Ronald Reagan, haven't gone to church much during their presidential years either. As far as the public's knowledge is concerned, however, absence from church might be a greater problem for Obama because, given the Reverend Wright affair, he came to office with a more troubled religious identity than his predecessors.
Given all that, it seems unlikely that Americans, or even a majority of Americans, will ever get Obama's religion right. There are a lot of reasons for that. Do those reasons include hatred for Obama and/or Islam itself? Yes. But no fair-minded observer would suggest it's all about hatred. And the pundits demanding answers from candidates should understand that the situation is far more complicated than what one politician does or does not say.
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