• Beauty queen: Christian dating site rape suspect threatened me

    View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

    By R. Stickney, NBCLosAngeles.com

    A California beauty queen has claimed she was a potential victim of a man charged with raping a woman he met on a Christian dating website.

    Sean Banks, 37, of Del Mar, is accused of raping a woman he met through ChristianMingle.com in November.

    And now, a contestant in the Miss California 2012 pageant claims Banks threatened her while out on bail.

    "He was aware that I had evidence and he started intimidating me from that point not to talk to police," Victoria Kinney said.

    Banks faces a number of charges including rape by force, digital penetration by force and residential burglary in connection with an alleged attack in La Mesa more than three months ago.

    In that case, a La Mesa woman told police Banks arrived at her home on Nov. 12, was sexually aggressive toward her and ultimately raped her. Banks was arrested by La Mesa police on Feb. 11.

    "This woman is alleging that he pushed the boundaries and attempted to have sexual intercourse with her against her will. We think when you see all the facts that will prove not to be the case," said defense attorney Gretchen von Helms.

    Banks, a graduate student of Pepperdine University and a former lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, appeared in an El Cajon courtroom Friday to face two additional criminal charges.

    One of the charges involves a date rape allegation from 2009 and the second charge involved dissuading a witness, or threatening a witness not to talk with police.

    Kinney, Miss Irvine-Orangewood in the 2012 Miss California pageant, said she met Banks through the ChristianMingle website.

    Banks used an alias in their communication, said Kinney's attorney, Daniel Gilleon.

    Investigators said Banks has been known to use several aliases online including Rarity, Rylan, Rylan Butterwood and Rylan Harbough.

    'Didn't listen to my instincts'
    The beauty queen said Banks was very charming at first but then he made comments that she took as threats.

    "I didn’t listen to my instincts," she said. "In those instances and looking back, I absolutely should have."

    "We discussed meeting for lunch when I returned and when I returned, he called me to let me know he had been arrested for rape," she added.

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    Gilleon said his client was terrified, but wanted to testify about her experience to support other possible victims.

    "She’s a Christian woman. She believes it’s her duty at this point to come forward, share her story generally and ask other women to come forward," Gilleon said.

    He said the comments made by Banks to Kinney were "clearly threats."

    As a result, Judge Charles Ervin approved on Friday a protective order banning Banks from having contact or getting within 100 yards of Kinney.

    Banks was taken into custody on a "no bail request" on the new charges even though he had posted $500,000 bail on his previous charges.

    Judge Ervin called it a unique request and told defense attorneys he had never seen the situation in 25 to 30 years.

    Von Helms said she and her co-counsel Jan Ronis had no time to review the additional charges and asked for a bail review early next week.

    "Anyone would feel terrible about these types of allegations and he certainly does," Von Helms said of Banks.

    "This young man -- he’s a Ph.D. candidate. He’s a college graduate. He served in the military. There are a lot of good factors about him that will come to light as we proceed in this case," she said.

    A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 26.

  • Feds offer reprieve for Indonesians who spent months in sanctuary in NJ

    Mel Evans / AP file

    Harry Pangemanan, one of the Indonesian Christians who sought sanctuary at the Reformed Church of Highland Park. The feds have told the immigrants they can leave the church without facing detention.

    By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Eight Indonesian immigrants who spent months holed up in a New Jersey church to avoid deportation have been told they're free to walk the streets again.

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that it has placed the six men and two women on "order of supervision" -- which means they can be out in the community without worrying that agents will swoop down and place them in detention.

    Pastor Seth Kaper-Dale of the Reformed Church of Highland Park in New Jersey.

    Deportation orders signed by a judge are still in effect, but as long as the immigrants check in with the feds periodically, they don't have to worry about them being enforced -- for now, anyway.

    "Absolute relief!" said Pastor Seth Kaper-Dale of the Reformed Church of Highland Park. "As you can imagine, church on Sunday was a gigantic celebration."

    The church started giving sanctuary to some of its Indonesian parishioners nearly a year ago. At one point, nine were camping out in Sunday school classrooms.

    Hairdressers and doctors made house calls so the "immigration fugitives," as ICE calls them, did not have to set foot off the property, where they could be arrested, the New York Daily News reported.

    "The threat was real," Kaper-Dale said.


    One immigrant who lived at the church for eight months left to drive his wife to work in October and was tailed and detained by federal agents two blocks away, Kaper-Dale said. Later that day, however, they released him and put his deportation on hold while his wife's asylum bid is pending.

    The immigrants say they left Indonesia years ago because they feared being persecuted for their Christian faith. They overstayed their tourist visas and missed deadlines to apply for asylum. After a hands-off approach, ICE made them a priority and began cracking down on them last year.

    "The whole thing has been so horrendous," Kaper-Dale said, but noted that the reprieve is a temporary fix.

    He said church members are hoping that two bills that would give the Indonesians another shot at applying for asylum, which were reintroduced in Congress last week, will be passed this year to provide a permanent solution.

     

    This story was originally published on Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:12 PM EST

  • The unaffiliated rank third among world religion groups, Pew study says

    Jim Hollander / EPA

    Franciscan nuns and Nigerian Christians pray inside St. Catherine's Church, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, traditionally accepted as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Monday.

    By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News

    Roughly one in six people around the world has no religious affiliation, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found, making the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population.


    The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys, the study issued Tuesday reads. Many of the religiously unaffiliated, however, hold religious or spiritual beliefs, the study emphasized.

    "For example, belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30 percent of French unaffiliated adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults," it read.

    Making up 16.3 percent of the world population, this group comprises a majority of the population in six countries. China's number of religiously unaffiliated is the largest, with a 62 percent share.

    The Pew Forum's study is based on self-identification.

    Titled "The Global Religious Landscape," the study analyzed data available as of early 2012 from more than 2,500 national censuses and large-scale surveys, and found that Christians are the world's biggest religious group, with 2.2 billion people or 32 percent of the world’s population. The largest share of all Christians live in the United States, followed by Brazil and Mexico.

    About half of all Christians are Catholic, while an estimated 37 percent of Christians are Protestant, the study shows. Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians make up 12 percent of Christians.

    With 23 percent of the world's population, Muslims represent the second-largest religious group and are a majority in 49 countries, including 19 of the 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Hindus make up 15 percent of the population, while the nearly 500 million Buddhists add up to 7 percent.

    The study also found that the median age of Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) is younger than the median age of the world’s overall population (28), and more than 12 years younger than the median age of Jews, which is 36 years old.

    "Muslims are going to grow as a share of the world's population, and an important part of that is this young age structure," Pew Forum demographer Conrad Hackett told Reuters.

    Judaism has the weakest growth prospects in comparison.

    There are about 15 million Jews in the world, or about 0.2 percent of the global population, and about 44 percent of them live in North America, while about 41 percent live mostly in Israel.

    The Pew Forum study also shows that an estimated 405 million people practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. More than 70 percent of the world’s folk religion practitioners live in China.

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  • Whites-only Christian gathering riles some Alabama neighbors

    Beyond the KKK banners, behind the white supremacy flag, is a controversial "pastors conference," held in rural Alabama open only to "white Christians," upsetting both neighbors and local officials. WVTM's Kalisha Whitman reports.

    By Kari Huus, NBC News

    A three-day whites-only religious conference — which will conclude with a flaming cross — in Lamar County, Alabama, has some residents upset at the racist implications while the minister complains that his freedom of speech is being violated.


    Kari Huus


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    "Yes, we believe that the Europeans and their descendants are the chosen people of God," according to the website for Christian Identity Ministries, which is holding the event with Church of God’s Chosen. "We believe this, not because we think that the white race is superior, but because there is overwhelming proof in support of this belief. We do not back down from this belief, because we are certain."

    Some local residents learned of the July 4-6 gathering after the group posted fliers promoting their fourth annual pastors conference, announcing "All White Christians Invited," according to a report by WBRC in Birmingham.

    "It was put up throughout the town in the middle of the night. (It was) when everyone was asleep without the permission of the business owner," said Tyler Cantrell, manager of Norris Music in nearby Winfield, Ala., the report said.

    According to the flier, the three-day conference, being held in a rural area, will end with a "Sacred Christian Cross Lighting Ceremony."

    "Business people are upset. The city is upset,” Winfield Mayor Wayne Silas told the TV station. "The city of Winfield does not condone this."

    Christian Identity Ministries founder Mel Lewis, who spoke to a reporter from WAFF TV of Huntsville, charged that the Winfield mayor was violating his flock’s right to free speech.

    "The mayor ordered our fliers to be taken down," he said. "When did they start religious censorship?"

    "We are not breaking any laws. We're not violating any ordinances. We're bringing the Word of God to people who want it, obviously, or they wouldn't be here," said Lewis at the rural venue, decorated with Confederate flags and KKK banners.

    Watch the most-viewed videos on msnbc.com

    The cross-burning ceremony planned for Friday — reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan practice used to intimidate blacks — was especially troubling, said Hezekiah Jackson, president of the Birmingham Metro Chapter of the NAACP.  

    "The only context that I'm familiar with is one that is not very positive. And one that really symbolizes an era that many of us have hoped to put behind us," Jackson told WIAT TV of Birmingham. "And that is this whole era of Jim Crow, this whole era of white supremacy, this whole era of discrimination and racial hatred."

    Lewis said the "cross lighting" ceremony is a symbolic rite of purification that long predates the Klan's inception, according to the report.

    Some of the participants in the conference are Ku Klux Klan members, organizers said, though that was not a requirement.

    "We don't have the facilities to accommodate other races, and we have nothing, not one bit of animosity, no racism whatsoever," Christian Identity Ministries Pastor William J. Collier told WIAT.

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  • Underground gay group emerges, shaking evangelical Christian college

    Michael Musser / Biola University

    The emergence of an underground gay group at Biola University has led to a wide-ranging debate about Christianity and homosexuality.

    By John Boxley and Ashley Bornancin, NBC News

    LA MIRADA, Calif. -- On the same day President Obama became the first U.S. president to come out in support of same-sex marriage, a group of students announced the presence of the "Biola Queer Underground" at this small evangelical university, touching off a highly-charged debate about Christianity and homosexuality.

    The group launched a website and posted flyers around the Biola University campus May 9 with the following message: "We want to bring to light the presence of the LGBTQ community at Biola. Despite what some may assume, there are Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Queers at Biola. We are Biola's students, alumni, employees, and fellow followers of Christ. We want to be treated with equality and respected as another facet of Biola's diversity."

    The emergence of the group, whose members remain anonymous, has shaken this 104-year-old Christian college in Southern California. Like many schools rooted in evangelical Christianity, Biola has a code of standards that includes prohibitions on sex outside of marriage and same-sex relationships: Sex is "designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between a husband and wife," according to Biola's student handbook, which goes on to say that "sexual misconduct, depending on the facts and circumstances of each case will result in disciplinary action."

    With debate raging over the group and its aims, Biola President Barry Corey told students that the school has no intention of changing its policy to "fit increasingly accepted ethical or moral norms. In particular, we don't need to modernize or bend our biblically based position on sexual ethics."

    The school also issued a new statement on “human sexuality” which calls same-sex relationships "illegitimate moral options for the confessing Christian.” The statement was in the works before the gay group announced itself, but BQU said it showed the "one-sided" nature of the conversation, with no room for those who believe homosexuality isn't sinful.

    Chris Grace, vice president for student development at Biola, said the school would like to engage in conversation with the underground group but has been stymied by the members' anonymity. “We really are at a disadvantage here because we don’t know who these people are,” Grace said, adding that the university would "love and welcome a conversation with them and that’s what we are hoping for."

    But members of BQU, who would only comment for this story anonymously, fear that by "coming out" they would be punished and possibly expelled. They said they consider themselves Christians "first and foremost" and love Biola, and are not looking to create "a war" on campus, but they are looking to have an open discussion about what it means to be Christian and gay.

    Eventually, Members of the group would like to "come out" and be open about their sexuality. "It’s important to our integrity to not have parts of us be hidden even among the Christian community,” a member said.

    One of the members said there is a lot of guilt in the Christian community over homosexuality, but wonders if that guilt is coming from "God, the Holy Spirit or is that guilt coming from sections of the Christian society?"

    Visit "Biola Queer Underground" to read members' stories

    "Biola is probably not going to change their doctrinal stance for a while; they are going to have their theological stance being against homosexuality for quite some time, that doesn't mean the culture, doesn’t mean they have to discipline openly gay students,” said one of the group’s leaders.

    Grace dismissed the notion that students who are "struggling with homosexuality" would face expulsion. "I guess you'd almost call that a myth that students would get expelled for that," Grace said. Instead, Biola offers students an "open-door policy" to talk about their struggles and receive spiritual counseling. But he makes it clear that for a student who identifies as gay and is engaging in "gay behavior and unwilling to uphold our community standards we would initiate the dismissal process."

    Debate about the group has raged among students and in the campus newspaper.

    Samuel Smith, a cinema and media arts major, objected to the fact the members won’t come forward. “If you want an honest and true discussion about what they're going through, I feel they shouldn't be anonymous.”

    Alexis Hughes, a biblical studies major, said the gay group’s anonymity is telling. "Obviously, if it's underground, they know it’s wrong and on some level they know they shouldn't be doing it"

    Gabriela Cacanindin, a business major, was hopeful the wider campus would be open to hearing what the group has to say. "I hope that we are open to the dialogue that needs to happen... ."

    But a female underground member says a true conversation is difficult. "I have sat in so many classes where we would have a conversation about homosexuality and I can’t tell my story because I am too afraid of getting in trouble, so how is that a conversation at all?"

    The group said they have received hate mail and they call some of the comments expressed in the school newspaper so painful that they had to quit reading it. One of them read, “If you embrace the lifestyle, you are at odds with God and scripture, and it is extremely doubtful that you are a Christian.”

    "We get questions, ‘Why are you even in school, Why are you causing a ruckus, Why don’t you just leave?’" one of the members told us.

    Not discouraged, the members of the gay group say they are here to stay. And, they added, they have received plenty of support in the community and around the country.

    "In some ways I'm shocked at how horrible people can be, but I'm also shocked at how wonderful people are too,” said one.

    They draw comfort in the fact that more Americans now support than oppose same-sex marriage, according to a recent Gallup poll, and are convinced that Biola will eventually "come around."

    School officials already are looking ahead to next year, when Biola celebrates its 105th anniversary, and they said plans are in the works to facilitate an “ongoing conversation” with students about homosexuality.

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  • Gunman kills 7 at small California university

    KNTV

    A victim in the shootings at Oikos University in Oakland, Calif., is taken to an ambulance.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

     

    Updated at 9:45 p.m. ET: Officials on Monday evening identified the suspect arrested in the shootings at a small Christian college in California that killed seven and wounded three others earlier in the day as a 43-year-old Oakland resident.

    At a press briefing with Mayor Jean Quan and others, Police Chief Howard Jordan said suspect One L. Goh was in the custody of Oakland police in connection with Monday's shooting spree, an event that he described as "shocking" and "senseless."

    He said the police had not identified a motive, nor did the suspect have any known criminal history. He said Goh is a Korean national.
    “It's going to take us a few days to put the pieces together," Jordan said.

    Witnesses who were in the classroom at Oikos University where the shootings took place said the shooter first ordered students to line up against a wall and then pulled a handgun, the Oakland Tribune reported.

     

    "The people started running and he started shooting," said Gurpreet Sahota, who relayed an account to the Tribune from his sister-in-law, Dawinder Kaur, 19.

    Chief Jordan said the suspect apparently commandeered a victim's car and drove it to Alameda, where he turned himself in to police at a Safeway store, about five miles from the shootings.

    Soon after the shooting, heavily armed officers swarmed the school in a large industrial park near the Oakland airport and, for at least an hour, believed the gunman could still be inside.

    Art Richards said he was driving by the university on his way to pick up a friend when he spotted a woman hiding in the bushes and pulled over. When he approached her, she said, "I'm shot" and showed him her arm.

    "She had a piece of her arm hanging out," Richards said, noting that she was wounded near the elbow.

    As police arrived, Richards said he heard 10 gunshots coming from inside the building. The female victim told him that she saw the gunman shoot one person point-blank in the chest and one in the head.

    Tashi Wangchuk, whose wife attended the school and witnessed the shooting, said he was told by police that the gunman first shot a woman at the front desk, then continued shooting randomly in classrooms.

    Wangchuk said his wife, Dechen Wangzom, was in her vocational nursing class when she heard gunshots. She locked the door and turned off the lights, Wangchuk said he was told by his wife, who was still being questioned by police Monday afternoon.

    Jordan said that five of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and two others died after arriving at the hospital.

    Oakland, Calif. authorities provide the latest details of their investigation into a shooting at Oikos University.

    Jordan said that he understood that the three injured people were being treated for injuries that were not life-threatening.

    The suspect, identified by the school as an ex-nursing student at Oikos, had been absent for months before the shootings, according to students quoted by the Oakland Tribune. The school's director told the Tribune he was unsure if the man had been expelled or dropped out.

    A memorial service was planned for Tuesday afternoon at the Korean Methodist Church, according to Mayor Quan.

    Quan said grief counselors would be made available to the people affected by the shooting spree, but said that there was still a need for Korean-speaking counselors.

    On its web site, Oikos says it aims to provide "a Christian education based on solid Christian doctrine and ideology."

    The institution, established in 2008, does not appear on the U.S. Department of Education list of accredited post-secondary institutions and programs. It has California state accreditation to award degrees in theology, music, Asian medicine and nursing.

    Oikos' annual revenue hovers around $1 million a year, according to publicly-available 990 tax forms for non-profit organizations.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Foxhole atheists plan to rock the base at Fort Bragg

    en.gravatar.com / rockbeyondbelief

    Sgt. Justin Griffith took up Fort Bragg officials on their promise not to discriminate on on-base activities after a 2010 concert and festival organized by evangelical Christians.

    By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

    After a sometimes painful 18 months of gestation, Sgt. Justin Griffith of Fort Bragg, N.C., exclaims, "My baby is about to be born!" His baby is Rock Beyond Belief, apparently the first major atheist event on a U.S. military base.

    Griffith, 29, who has served five years in the Army, including two deployments to Iraq, has been wrestling with the overwhelmingly Christian establishment in the Army since September 2010 to get to this point.

    The March 31 event is Griffith’s answer to Rock the Fort — a day-long evangelical Christian concert and festival held at Fort Bragg on Sept. 25, 2010, put on by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, with the support and blessing of the military brass. It was the fourth in a series of events sponsored  by the group on various U.S. bases dating to 2009.

    Among the headliners for the all-day atheist festival on the base are scientist Richard Dawkins, the rock band Aiden and singer/songwriter Roy Zimmerman.

    Kari Huus


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    Griffith is most proud that the event has garnered the same material support from the military that it gave the evangelical Christian event. This week, he announced that he had secured a commitment for the U.S. Army Golden Knights — an elite skydiving team — to perform in the festival, despite the reluctance of some of the team’s Christian members.

    "We asked for apples-to-apples treatment to the (Christian) event," said Griffith. "We fought for it. I won. I think (Fort Bragg leadership) won too because they did the right thing."

    Griffith, who describes himself as a hardcore atheist, said he loves the Army, but he is constantly chafing at prayers — Christian, or non-specific invocations — that routinely are included in military ceremonies. But the Rock the Fort concert and festival spurred him to action.

    "They bragged that they got hundreds of soldiers …  to accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior," said Griffith of the concert-festival series. "That is unacceptable. The chaplain’s job is not to grow their flock, it’s their job to take tend to the existing flock."

    Griffith was the most outspoken critic of the event on the base, though a number of groups — Freedom from Religion Foundation, American United for the Separation of Church and State and others — said the event violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

    Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick who leads the 18th Airborne Corps responded by saying that soldiers were not pressured to attend the event, and assured critics that he would provide the same opportunity to non-Christian groups that wanted to host similar events, according to a USA Today report at the time. Garrison Commander Stephen Sicinski provided a similar guarantee in writing, Griffith said.

    So Griffith started planning Rock Beyond Belief. The process was bumpy — and bureaucratic — but the event was eventually approved for April 2011.

    But when he learned that the forum set aside for the event would hold only a few hundred people — "a broom closet" in his estimation — he canceled it. Arguing that Dawkins, a noted genetics scientist and atheist celebrity, alone routinely pulls much larger crowds than that, he reapplied for a bigger venue this year, and won approval for the March 31 gathering, a year later.

    Rock Beyond Belief has drawn some fierce criticism. Army Chaplain Chuck Williams, for example, posted an open letter on Fort Bragg’s Facebook page calling for cancelation of the event, which he contended is being held only "to secure a public, government-owned venue to ridicule, mock and disparage those of our fellow Soldiers and family members who do profess a faith in God."

    He also wrote that "part of this event will be glorifying violence against people who possess a faith in God through the burning of churches," a reference to lyrics from a song by Aiden. "This is appalling!"

    Griffith blames a Fox News commentary by Todd Starnes for the furor, charging that he misunderstood the lyrics, which were satirical. The band’s lead singer wrote that the song “Hysteria” was actually a condemnation of faith-on-faith violence and hatred.

    Although the event appears set to go forward, the debate continues. Griffith said he has received "bizarre death threats," but he also feels the conversation is changing, and putting Fort Bragg in a new light.

    "I’m so proud of Fort Bragg and this is not supposed to be a black eye to them," he said. "These little corrections are important, and the Army deserves them. I want to know if I have crumbs on my face. That’s what this is. If it’s a big deal it’s only temporarily a big deal."

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  • Evangelist Franklin Graham apologizes to Obama for questioning his Christian faith

    By msnbc.com staff

    Updated Wednesday at 10:25 a.m. ET: Here is the full statement from Franklin Graham apologizing for remarks he made questioning the faith of President Barack Obama:

    I regret any comments I have ever made which may have cast any doubt on the personal faith of our president, Mr. Obama. The president has said he is a Christian and I accept that (and have said so publicly on many occasions). I apologize to him and to any I have offended for not better articulating my reason for not supporting him in this election—for his faith has nothing to do with my consideration of him as a candidate.

     

    The Rev. Franklin Graham joins Morning Joe to discuss if the president is or is not a Christian.

    In fact, Article VI of our Constitution strictly prohibits any religious test for public office. I believe we should consider a candidate’s values and competence above anything else when considering whom to support for public office. I even reject the idea that we should only vote for a candidate of our own particular faith, for oftentimes that is not an available option.

    My objection to President Obama is built on his policy positions on a number of important moral issues, and not on his religion or faith. For example, I believe his positions on abortion and on traditional marriage are in direct conflict with God’s standards as set forth in Scripture. I have determined I cannot and will not vote for him or any candidate in either party whose policy positions on such critical issues violate biblical truths and standards.

    My views here are not biased according to political party or religion. For example, I would support a pro-life Democrat over a pro-choice Republican at any level. I would support a Mormon or a Jew who supported the defense of marriage defined as being between a man and a woman over a Southern Baptist or Presbyterian who did not.

    In this election season and challenging economic time I am praying for our country and for those who lead it—for we are commanded in Scripture to do so. I am also praying that our nation will return to the God of our fathers and will look to His Son, Jesus Christ as the only real answer to life’s problems and hurts.

    Previous story: The Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, on Tuesday apologized to President Barack Obama for questioning his Christian faith, Religion News Service reported.

    "I regret any comments I have ever made which may have cast any doubt on the personal faith of our president, Mr. Obama," Graham said in a statement, according to Religion News Service.

    "I apologize to him and to any I have offended for not better articulating my reason for not supporting him in this election -- for his faith has nothing to do with my consideration of him as a candidate."

    Graham, a prominent evangelical leader in his own right and CEO of the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, had taken heat from black religious leaders and others for saying he did not know whether Obama is a Christian.

    On a panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show on Feb. 21, Graham was asked if he believes Obama is a Christian.

    “I think you have to ask President Obama,” Graham responded.

    “You have to ask him. I cannot answer that question for anybody. All I know is that I’m a sinner, and that God has forgiven me of my sins because I’ve put my faith in … Jesus Christ," Graham said.

    He added that because Obama's father was a Muslim, "under Islamic law, the Muslim world sees Barack Obama as a Muslim." And he said that he was confident that Republican Rick Santorum is a Christian.

    The NAACP accused Graham of trying to “use faith as a political weapon.”

    “Rev. Graham also seemed to imply that the president may be a Muslim, despite the fact that the president has repeatedly expressed his faith and belief in Jesus Christ,” the NAACP said. “By his statements, Rev. Graham seems to be aligning himself with those who use faith as a weapon of political division. These kinds of comments could have enormous negative effects for America and are especially harmful to the Christian witness."

    You can read the full Religion News Service story here. And our previous story on Graham's comments on Obama is here.

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