President Barack Obama's comment at this week's
Easter Prayer Breakfast that some Christians are acting "less-than-loving" is the latest in a string of remarks and actions that some say suggest he has an anti-Christian bias.
"On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that, as a Christian, I am supposed to love, and I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned, but that's a topic for another day," Obama said in his address on Tuesday.
In February he got himself in hot water at the
National Prayer Breakfast after comparing Islamic terrorism to the Crusades.
"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama had said.
And critics have said the president has failed to bring attention to Christian persecution around the world, most recently in Iraq where Christians have been beheaded at the hands of the Islamic State.
The president's words and actions have not gone unnoticed.
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said that it appeared the president was more critical of Christians than Muslims.
"The fact is that all human beings fall short. We are all sinners," O'Reilly said on Wednesday's
"The O'Reilly Factor."
"But in the political arena, it seems like President Obama is more skeptical of Christians than he is of Muslims. That may not be true, but that's what it feels like."
On Tuesday, Fox News host Megyn Kelly said the president's most recent comments could have a chilling effect on those who want to speak out against ongoing persecution of Christians.
"I mean, the question is whether those comments do real damage not just to morale among Christians about what their own president thinks of them, but… that they feel he won't stand up for Christians who are under threat," Kelly said on
"The Kelly File."
Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, said that the president's comments at the Easter breakfast showed that "he has a very strange definition of freedom of religion."
"He believes in freedom of religion as long as you agree with him, but if you disagree with him on gay marriage, for instance, then he wants to weaponize the government against you," Land told J.D. Hayworth on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
Persecution of Christians in the Middle East will get worse and spread within America because the president is "very sympathetic to Islam," said evangelical pastor Franklin Graham.
"The storm of Islam" is coming, he said,
according to CNS News.
He attributed the president's views to having spent time in Indonesia growing up under the influence of his father and stepfather, both of whom were Muslim.
"So, growing up, his frame of reference and his influence as a young man was Islam," Graham said. "It wasn't Christianity, it was Islam."
Others have also cast doubt on the nature of Obama's Christian faith.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, says Obama has no religious faith — and believes in absolutely nothing.
"I know the secular-minded people. He's certainly one of them," Donohue
told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV following the president's comments at the National Prayer Breakfast.
"I don't believe he's a Christian and I don't believe he's a Muslim … He believes in nothing, stands for nothing and he's good for nothing."
"God knows Christians have done some ugly things in history and so has every group. Why is it that every time the Muslims are being discussed about savagery, somehow it always gets back to Catholics?" Donohue said.
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