Grassley: Obama says he’s a Christian, so ‘I have to take him at his word’

WDCPIX.COM

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sat down with the editorial board of the Sioux City Journal Wednesday, and while discussing a variety of topics, the Senator weighed in on the misconception that President Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Kim Lehman, one of three Iowans on the Republican National Committee, said first on her Twitter and later in several interviews with the media that she believes the president has admitted he isn’t a Christian, but rather a secret Muslim. Before that, a recent nationwide poll found one third of Republicans believe the untrue conspiracy theory about Obama’s religion.

Grassley was asked why he believes people think Obama is a Muslim. Bret Hayworth reports his answer.

It could be partly because he doesn’t refer to his own religious beliefs like a lot of previous presidents have done. President Clinton was pretty open about it, said where he worshipped and went to church quite regularly, and Bush did. I’m not sure about all the presidents, but I’m sure Jimmy Carter did. And so you kind of knew, and there wasn’t any question about it. This president doesn’t talk about it much and he is a little different than recent presidents in not having what we would call having a home church there, in that (D.C.) area.

But I have to look at it from this standpoint, that what little bit (Obama) has expressed about his religion, he claims to be a Christian and I have never heard anything from him that would cause me to question that he says he’s a Christian. So I have to take him at his word.

Time magazine’s Amy Sullivan wrote back in 2008 that “Ronald Reagan didn’t go to church at all” and while “[t]he Clintons drove down the street every Sunday to Foundry United Methodist… George W. Bush never became a regular member of any local church, preferring to worship most often at the chapel at Camp David.”

The Hill’s Jordy Yager expands on this point.

President Bush is widely known for his religious beliefs, but for eight years has not frequented a local church, at times citing security concerns. Ronald Reagan also did not attend a church regularly, saying that after the attempt on his life it was too great a risk. And Richard Nixon opted to have Billy Graham come to the White House for private religious services.

White House spokesman Bill Burton told Politico the president “prays every day. He communicates with his religious adviser every single day. There’s a group of pastors that he takes counsel from on a regular basis.”

Grassley’s statement that he will “have to take [the president] at his word” that he’s a Christian is similar to statements made by numerous state and national Republicans, including U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Terry Branstad. Graham Gillette, who runs a public affairs/communications firm and occasionally blogs for The Des Moines Register, criticized these types of statements as “fence sitting” that are basically a way to “hint that maybe [the president's] word is suspect and that [Kim] Lehman may be correct in questioning the president’s faith in the first place.”