For a man who hasn’t joined a church in Washington since moving into the White House, President Barack Obama has packed a lot of religion into his life this week.
\n![\"OBAMA\/\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.reuters.com\/frontrow\/files\/2010\/04\/RTR2CHPQ_Comp.jpg?resize=480%2C319\" "\\"OBAMA\/\\"")
\nAfter attending church with his family on Easter Sunday, the president held a prayer breakfast on Tuesday at the White House and, without offering an intimate look at his own spirituality, expressed some joy at being able to celebrate his religion, Christianity.<\/p>\n
“Today, I’m particularly blessed to welcome you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, for this Easter breakfast,” Obama said at the opening of the event, noting that the White House had held a Seder to mark the Jewish Passover and an Iftar with Muslim Americans during Ramadan.<\/p>\n
“I can’t tell any of you anything about Easter that you don’t already know,” he said to laughter. “But what I can do is tell you what draws me to this holy day and what lesson I take from Christ’s sacrifice and what inspires me about the story of the resurrection.”<\/p>\n
During the 2008 presidential campaign Obama had to deny recurring suggestions that he was Muslim. He also struggled to distance himself from controversial remarks by his long-time pastor, whose church Obama eventually left.
\n![\"OBAMA\/\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.reuters.com\/frontrow\/files\/2010\/04\/RTR2CHRM_Comp-300x208.jpg?resize=300%2C208\" "\\"OBAMA\/\\"")
\nThe president has not joined a church in Washington. On Tuesday he focused his remarks, which were greeted with affirmative murmurs of “yes” from those attending the breakfast, on the message of redemption.<\/p>\n
“As I am continually learning, we are, each of us, imperfect. Each of us errs — by accident or by design. Each of us falls short of how we ought to live. And selfishness and pride are vices that afflict us all,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So, on this day, let us commit our spirit to the pursuit of a life that is true, to act justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord. And when we falter, as we will, let redemption — through commitment and through perseverance and through faith — be our abiding hope and fervent prayer.”<\/p>\n
For more Reuters political news, click here.<\/p>\n
Photo credit: Reuters\/Kevin Lamarque (Obama at prayer breakfast; best-selling author Joel Osteen, the pastor of Lakewood Church in Texas, with his wife, Victoria, at the prayer breakfast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a man who hasn’t joined a church in Washington since moving into the White House, President Barack Obama has packed a lot of religion into his life this week. After attending church with his family on Easter Sunday, the president held a prayer breakfast on Tuesday at the White House and, without offering an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2YS5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811755,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710649\/revisions\/811755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}