President searches for a church home

WASHINGTON - President Obama and his family are looking for a new church, but his decision represents more than merely settling on a pew.

The Obamas planned to attend Easter services today, marking the president's first visit to a Washington church since taking office in January. Aides have been secretive about which church the first family will attend, citing security and the desire not to disrupt services for other worshipers. They also caution that the church visit might not signal that the president has decided on a permanent place of worship.

Obama's choice of a church leader is sure to draw scrutiny, given his history with a pastor in Chicago whose bombastic sermons almost destroyed Obama's presidential bid.

"On one level, I think he's just getting acclimated to D.C. He's still feeling things out. Easter is a very important day in the Christian calendar; he's a Christian," said J. Kameron Carter, who teaches theology and black church studies at Duke University. "But you are the president. Whatever decision he makes is going to be analyzed with a fine-tooth comb against the backdrop of the Rev. Wright."

Obama's presidential campaign was blindsided last year when video surfaced of his friend and pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, condemning the United States and suggesting the government was to blame for the HIV/AIDS scourge on black communities. Wright's sermons forced the then-senator to deliver two speeches: the first, a tempered defense of the pastor whose rhetoric inspired the title of Obama's memoir; later, a speech about Obama's views on race that has been viewed almost six million times online.

Wright followed up with a media tour that personally frustrated Obama and politically enraged his aides. Obama left Trinity United Church of Christ and has been without an official house of worship since then, instead relying on a close circle of advisers and pastors to help him in private.

"What the president should do - and I believe would do - is find a church home that's good for his family," said Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical who speaks with White House aides several times each day and Obama frequently.

"In the post-Jeremiah world, he can't just do that," Wallis said.

Obama, like three out of four Americans, is Christian. He has told his advisers he needs a church, and he faces a choice.

He could join a historically African American church in the nation's capital, where 55 percent of the population is black. It would be a nod to his family's roots on the South Side of Chicago, a signal to his black supporters who helped fuel his rapid rise, and a cue to his two young daughters. It could also be a problem if a message from the pulpit comes anywhere close to Wright's rhetoric.

Aides say he could just as easily select an integrated church, similar to the one he visited immediately after his South Carolina Democratic primary win last year. Experts caution against reading too much into what Obama does today and beyond to address his personal faith.

"At the end of the day, whatever way he finally goes is going to be dissected," said Carter of Duke's divinity school. "I think it gets in the way on some level."