Is Obama more religion-friendly than his party? Many Americans think so, says new poll

President Obama's administration is seen as more friendly toward religion than the Democratic Party as a whole, a new Pew poll has found.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they view Obama as religion-friendly, while only 29% said they see the Democratic Party that way, according to the poll.

The findings aren't surprising. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama courted religious voters more aggressively than most recent Democratic presidential candidates by putting faith front and center.

In July 2008, during the height of the presidential race, then-Sen. Obama pledged to expand a controversial White House program that gives federal grants to churches and small community groups.

Later that summer, during a forum at evangelical Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, Obama, who is Christian, spoke of "walking humbly with our God" and quoted from the Gospel of Matthew.

It paid off. 

Forty-three percent of voters who said they attend church weekly chose Obama over Republican John McCain, according to the National Election Pool exit survey, a change from recent election trends, in which religious voters overwhelmingly chose Republican candidates. Among occasional worshipers, Obama won 57% of the vote.

The Pew poll found that the Republican Party is still seen as friendlier toward religion than either Obama or the Dems. Forty-eight percent of those polled viewed the GOP as friendly toward religion.

The poll, which was conducted in August by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, also asked people about their views of the news media, scientists and Hollywood related to religion.

Fourteen percent of voters said they view the news media as friendly toward religion, and 12% said they view scientists that way. Only 11% said they see Hollywood as friendly toward religion.

-- Kate Linthicum

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Photo: Then-Sen. Obama, left, appears at a forum in August 2008 with Pastor Rick Warren at Warren's  Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Warren led the invocation at Obama's inauguration in January. Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Carol]

OMG the leftist bias media's packaged image of Obama has not failed to deceive has it? Even this article states he is "Christian". He most definitely is not Christian. Rev Wrights church's tenet (Damn any god that does not assist in liberating the black even Jesus). The so called belief in Jesus is only that Jesus suffered persecution as the black man has. That church is far more aligned with the Black Muslim and Black Panthers, not Christianity. Search YouTube for Obama is a Muslim and you will hear Obama's own words that align him with his own sympathies with the Muslim faith even radical Muslims. The leftist are so blinded by their own smug rhetoric they cannot see this man's agenda is to squeeze every dime out of America until our dollar until our economy is thrust into a one world money system and he is set up as the new leader of Post America. That is his agenda that aligns with Marxist, Communists, and even the radical Muslim's that attacked the twin towers. They will not wake up until Acorn ghetto workers are moving into their mansions and they are ousted into the streets "if" they are white.