Religious views
Obama is a
Protestant Christian whose religious views developed in his adult life.
[82] He wrote in
The Audacity of Hope that he "was not raised in a religious household". He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known." He described his father as a "confirmed
atheist" by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." Obama explained how, through working with
black churches as a
community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change."
[83]

The Obamas worship at
African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., January 2013
In January 2008, Obama told
Christianity Today: "I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the
redemptive death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life."
[84] On September 27, 2010, Obama released a statement commenting on his religious views saying, "I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't – frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead – being my brothers' and sisters' keeper,
treating others as they would treat me."
[85][86]
Obama met
Trinity United Church of Christ pastor Rev.
Jeremiah Wright in October 1987 and became a member of Trinity in 1992.
[87] During Obama's first presidential campaign in May 2008, he resigned from Trinity after
some of Wright's statements were criticized.
[88] Since moving to Washington, D.C., in 2009, the Obama family has attended several Protestant churches, including
Shiloh Baptist Church and
St. John's Episcopal Church, as well as Evergreen Chapel at
Camp David, but the members of the family do not attend church on a regular basis.
[89][90][91]