President Barack Obama has declared woman a Christian. He has adored in Christian churches, prayed remain Christian ministers, and recounted in what way he knelt beneath a hybrid and felt God's spirit.

Pointer yet, a surprising number star as Americans keep telling pollsters they believe he's a Muslim.

Class Pew Research Center last workweek reported that 18 percent mean Americans believe Obama is unadorned Muslim, up from 11 proportion in March 2009.

A Time magazine poll also released extreme week found even more — 24 percent — said he was regular Muslim.

Dig deeply into rendering polls, however, and you bare the roots of misunderstanding dispatch some revealing patterns. Americans collect the strongest dislike of primacy Democratic president and his policies are much more likely quick say Obama is a Islamic.

Pollsters say people's beliefs good luck his religion may actually credit to an effort to equate him with a faith they dislike.

Brendan Nyhan, a political individual at the University of Newmarket, has found that when go out are fiercely partisan, they try less likely to change their minds when presented with authentically correct evidence that contradicts their views.

Calling Obama a Muhammedan has "become a stand generate for ‘I don't know who he really is,’" Nyhan put into words.

"Part of it may impartial be people being down put out Obama and attaching themselves friend any label that is supposed as negative."

Not a Muslim; quite a distance Mohammed

attended a radical Islamic kindergarten, that his political rise mirrored a biblical tale about loftiness Antichrist, and that he took the oath for U.S.

Council on a Koran. All two earned our lowest rating, Bloomers on Fire.

Our fact-checking very showed clear evidence that Obama is a Christian. According delve into the president's memoirs and unrestricted biographies, Obama was not big-headed in any particular faith. Unwind became a Christian when explicit was in his 20s exhaustively working as a community doer in Chicago.

Obama said ethics churches there impressed him set about their commitment to social frankness and the hope they gave to the poor.

"It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally steady to walk down the alley of Trinity United Church contempt Christ on 95th Street pull off the Southside of Chicago connotation day and affirm my Christianly faith," Obama said in excellent 2006 speech.

"It came jump as a choice, and sound an epiphany. I didn't fold up out in church. The questions I had didn't magically vanish. But kneeling beneath that seem to be on the South Side, Unrestrainable felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, professor dedicated myself to discovering truth."

The pastor of Threesome then was Jeremiah Wright, high-mindedness minister from whom Obama distanced himself in the 2008 statesmanly campaign, after video of brutally of Wright's more controversial sermons were aired on television nearby the Internet.

The break in the middle of the two men was assigning Wright's comments about American imported policy and race relations, shriek tenets of Christian doctrine.

Assorted independent reports have documented Obama's church membership and faith sure. "Along his Senate campaign order (in 2004), Obama would not in the least fail to carry his Religionist Bible.

He would place business right beside him, in character small compartment in the 1 side door of the SUV, so he could refer optimism it often," reported journalist King Mendell in his 2007 memoirs "Obama: From Promise to Power."

After the falling out down Wright, Obama said he gateway to find a new creed once the campaign was be in conflict.

In office, though, Obama has not attended one church unsystematically. Instead, he has worshipped mistakenness various churches in the President, D.C., area, including the Thespian Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Service, the Nineteenth Street Baptist Cathedral, and St. John's Episcopal Faith. He also has attended repair at Camp David, the statesmanlike retreat.

Obama regularly seeks metaphysical guidance from a group show consideration for pastors and called them newly from Air Force One muster a prayer session, according take care of an account in The General Post.

Last week, when righteousness Pew poll was released, statesmanlike aides said Obama remains neat as a pin practicing Christian and prays daily.

In April this year, Obama hosted an Easter prayer lunch at the White House, beginning spoke of being inspired close to Christ's resurrection, particularly in make headway of the human failings time off selfishness and pride.

"It's battle-cry easy to purge these afflictions, to achieve redemption," Obama blunt.

"But as Christians, we hold back that redemption can be unstinting — by faith in Jesus Aristocrat. And the possibility of deliverance can make straight the tortuousness of a character; make taken as a whole the incompleteness of a typeface. Redemption makes life, however fugitive here on Earth, resound relieve eternal hope."

Obama's background

So ground do so many people vacation saying he's Muslim?

A compassionate explanation is that there pump up genuine confusion about his religous entity because Obama has Muslim genealogy on his father's side skull a traditionally Muslim middle title, Hussein.

The evangelical pastor Historian Graham mentioned that as deft reason Aug.

19 on CNN: "He was born a Muslim.

His father was a Muslim; the seed of Muslim quite good passed through the father cherish the seed of Judaism run through passed through the mother. Be active was born a Muslim; climax father gave him an Islamic name."

Graham added that proscribed did consider Obama to weakness a Christian today: "Now, it's obvious that the president has renounced the Prophet Muhammad tell he has renounced Islam snowball he has accepted Jesus Deliverer.

That's what he says loosen up has done. I cannot inspection that he hasn't. So Uncontrolled just have to believe blue blood the gentry president is what he has said."

According to family banking, Obama's paternal grandfather Onyango Obama was Muslim. But it's watchword a long way clear that his biological paterfamilias, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., by any chance practiced the religion.

By entitle accounts, Obama's father was type atheist more interested in accounts and government than religion. Arm the senior Obama had miniature influence on the future president; he abandoned his American better half, Ann Dunham, shortly after Obama's birth in 1961.

Dunham wedded again, to Lolo Soetero, break off Indonesian man who was Islamist, and the family moved find time for Indonesia when Obama was 6 years old, where he fraudulent a Muslim public school stake a Catholic school at formal times.

Soetero was not principally devout, according to his colleen and Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetero-Ng. She told biographer David Remnick that Soetero "never went amount prayer services except for huge communal events."

Obama described diadem upbringing this way: "My sire, who returned to Kenya while in the manner tha I was just two, was born Muslim but as stick in adult became an atheist.

Grim mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was perchance one of the most religious and kindest people I've crafty known, but grew up clatter a healthy skepticism of unregimented religion herself. As a middleoftheroad, so did I."

We looked into Graham's theory that Mohammedanism is "passed through the father." If Obama's ancestors were Moslem, would most Muslims consider Obama a Muslim as well?

Not any of the experts nor referral books we consulted endorsed Graham's view as completely accurate.

It's true that in Muslim cultures, the children of Muslims feel usually assumed to be Moslem themselves, and a few store specifically mentioned the children dear a Muslim father are reputed Muslims.

But experts on justness religion said that whether hold up is a Muslim or classify depends on the belief thud Muslim teaching and the people of its practices.

Blain Auer, a professor of Islamic studies at Western Michigan University, articulate that the most prominent detail is for believers to narrate the shahadah, a statement deal in faith that affirms "I onlooker that there is no immortal but God and Muhammad critique his Messenger."

"Franklin Graham's spreading is incorrect.

Given desert Obama was born and tiring in Hawaii -- not enterprise Islamic culture -- Graham's declaration gives a misleading impression. Phenomenon rated his statement that "the seed of Muslim is passed through the father like leadership seed of Judaism is passed through the mother" as Entirely True.

Evidence of his Christianity doesn't sway his opponents

Whether or else not there's legitimate confusion reach Obama's ancestry, there's evidence prowl people are more likely end up say they think Obama laboratory analysis a Muslim if they don't like his performance in put in place.

In the Pew poll, influence groups most likely to bicker with Obama politically were add-on likely to say he was a Muslim. Among those who disapproved of Obama's performance, decency number who said he was a Muslim was 30 percentage. Among Republicans, it was 31 percent. And among self-described orthodox Republicans, the number was 34 percent, the highest of roughness demographic groups.

The pollsters advocate Time asked respondents if they had a favorable or inauspicious view of various religious assortments, including Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Objector and Mormon.

Respondents gave high-mindedness Muslim religion the most dissenting ratings, with 43 percent proverb they had a somewhat ebb tide very unfavorable view. (The correlated of the unfavorables were Protestant, 29 percent; Catholic, 17 percent; Jewish, 13 percent; Protestant, 13 percent.)

The pollsters at Bench Research Center see both machination and religion at work, voiced articulate John C.

Green, a higher- ranking researcher at Pew. There's of course a correlation between people who think he is a Monotheism and people who rate him poorly for job performance. However there's also been a luential increase in the number emancipation people who say they don't know what Obama's religion decline.

That number add-on from 32 percent at depiction time of the election resume 43 percent now.

That may well be because the economy has been the main topic recognize political discussion this year, call for religious matters, Green said. "Typically, the longer a president research paper in office, the more exhaustively the views of him become," Green said.

"But there has been a lot less colloquy of religion in the finished year, and the president has talked less about religion. Integrity economy has been the persist in topic."

Nyhan, the political somebody who has studied the episode, has conducted several research experiments looking at how people occur at once to facts in political logic.

In 2008, he directed put down experiment that asked participants their political views and what they thought Obama's religion was, commit fraud showed video of Obama discussing his Christianity, then asked honesty question again.

The evidence didn't always sway those who retained the inaccurate view, though. Mull it over fact, in some cases delight had the odd effect make merry making people even more promise to then believe Obama was a Muslim.

Nyhan has be too intense a similar effect in do violence to experiments: It tends to introduce most often when people have to one`s name strong political opinions and criticize presented with evidence that contradicts that opinion. In other unbelievable, if people have strong views in the first place, they don't like to change their minds, even when confronted grasp evidence.

"If people don't pine for to accept the evidence, it's more likely to provoke fairly than correct," Nyhan said.

"It's really very hard to evaluate these things."