Obama's Unique Road to Faith

As a young man, Barack Obama experienced a lonely, drawn-out crisis of faith—and now finds himself churchless as the whole world watches, Newsweek reports. His father was an atheist Muslim, his mother a Christian who turned secular, and Obama eventually embraced Chicago's Trinity United after years of church-based activism. His conversion wasn't "a bolt of lightning," he said. "It was more a gradual process."

But now that he and Rev. Jeremiah Wright are at odds, Obama has no church—at a time when 12% of voters believe he is Muslim and conservatives are blasting his "confused theology." But Obama says he mixes Christianity with the Golden Rule, believing that other religions are also true. "My particular set of beliefs," Obama admits, "may not be perfectly consistent with the beliefs of other Christians." (More religion stories.)