Does Obama's Faith Matter?

"We have had a war of attrition over Obama's religious reputation since the campaign," said John Avlon, author of "Wingnuts," a book on the political fringe. "It all comes from the same place: this idea that he's the other -- alien."

Doubts about his religious views were stoked, Avlon said, when Obama quit Trinity United Church of Christ -- a prestigious African American congregation in Chicago -- amid the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary remarks about race, but didn't immediately join another church. When he came to Washington as president, many expected Obama would select a new church or sample many different ones. But in more than 19 months he's been in office, he has been seen heading to the golf course more than to church.

"When Rev. Wright blew up, and Obama left that church, his failure to find another congregation was seen as evidence that it was all a fraud to begin with -- for some folks on the far right," said Avlon, a former speechwriter to Rudy Giuliani, referring to the controversy over the African-American minister's remarks about race. "The fact that [Obama] hasn't found a new congregation that he attends on a regular basis is used to just underscore that."

"There's enough misinformation out there that it can cause confusion, and there aren't photographs of him attending church every Sunday," noted Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Poll.

White House spokesman Bill Burton suggested Thursday that the increase in people thinking the president is a Muslim could actually be the product of a vacuum -- the public seeing less coverage of Obama practicing his faith.

"For most Americans, they're not reading a lot in the news about what religion the president is," Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama headed to Martha's Vineyard for vacation. "What they're focused on is, you know, what you guys are focused on, which is important issues like what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, what's going on in the economy, what are we doing to create jobs."

However, Burton said the lack of pictures of Obama praying or singing from a hymnal shouldn't lead anyone to think he isn't religious, or doubt what religion he ascribes to.

"The president is obviously a -- is Christian. He prays every day. He communicates with his religious adviser every single day. There's a group of pastors that he takes counsel from on a regular basis. And his faith is very important to him. But it's not something that is a topic of conversation every single day," Burton said.

Another White House official, Jen Psaki, sent reporters a statement calling Obama a "committed Christian"--a phrase his campaign rolled out two years ago when his faith became a subject of contention and Internet rumors.

One prominent Democrat said Obama's low-key approach to faith could be feeding the misperceptions.

"President Obama has, I believe, referred to his religion less frequently than the two prior Democrats to hold that job -- Southern Baptists Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and certainly less than George W. Bush," said Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant and former adviser to Clinton. Obama, he said, "is not a man who wears his faith on his sleeve, so maybe that's part of what's going on." 

The new Time poll found 24 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Another survey taken for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found 18 percent of respondents think Obama is an adherent of the Islamic faith--up from 11 percent early last year.

The Pew survey was taken in July, before the controversy over a mosque and Islamic cultural center near ground zero in New York gained national attention. The Time poll was taken on Monday and Tuesday of this week as the story dominated the news cycle -- and just after Obama weighed in publicly on the issue at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Last Friday, he told Muslim leaders that American principles of religious freedom -- backed by the Constitution -- guaranteed that a Muslim group had the right to build an Islamic center and mosque in lower Manhattan. However, the following day, Obama said he wasn't taking a position either way on the plan to build it two blocks from ground zero.