Why doesn’t Obama wear his religion on his sleeve?

Well, maybe. Obama’s father left the family scene when the future president was two years old, and although he’s reached out to Muslims worldwide there’s no evidence that he’s personally embraced Islam. (Franklin Graham is not exactly a disinterested party here; he has called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion.”)

Obama’s problem may be that he takes the New Testament injunction about praying in the closet too literally – for a politician, anyway. (See Matthew, chapter 6.)

If not in the closet, then at least through the privacy of his BlackBerry, which is how he gets his daily early-morning devotionals from Joshua DuBois, the young Pentecostal minister (with a graduate degree in international affairs from Princeton) who heads the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

There are also conference calls in which Obama prays with clergy of various Christian denominations. And he’s actually been spotted praying together with the Republican congressional leadership … although it was in silence, and their prayers of petition may have canceled each other out.

But the Obama family has not joined a Washington-area church, noting that the presence of the First Family (not to mention a platoon of Secret Service agents) can be a major disruption for parishioners.

In having to rebut charges that he’s a Muslim, Obama seems to be in good company. Abe Lincoln’s political opponents rumored that he was Roman Catholic, Franklin Roosevelt’s that he was secretly Jewish. There is still a sizable chunk of voters who would not vote for Mitt Romney for president because he’s Mormon – not a Christian religion, some theologians argue.

But in the end, as most polls show, Obama’s success as president will hinge on things other than his religious faith, no matter how publicly he expresses it.

For as Democratic consultant Paul Begala told Politico: “I don't think Americans would care if he were a Druid, so long as we were creating jobs. It is still the economy, stupid.”

[UPDATE: This 2004 interview with Obama about his religion may be instructive.]

IN PICTURES: Inside President Obama's White House

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