{"id":533,"date":"2008-04-22T09:23:42","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T09:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html"},"modified":"2008-04-22T09:23:42","modified_gmt":"2008-04-22T09:23:42","slug":"church-asks-are-obama-and-osam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html","title":{"rendered":"Church Asks &#8216;Are Obama and Osama Bros?&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"churchsign.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/211\/import\/churchsign.jpg\" width=\"199\" \/>It must be said up top that the South Carolina Democratic primary is long since over and that Barack Obama won it handily, so God-o-Meter won&#8217;t extrapolate too much about this story&#8217;s implications for Obama&#8217;s campaign going forward, including the fact that North Carolina hosts the next primary after today&#8217;s in Pennsylvania. Still, this stuff must drive the Obama camp crazy.<br \/>\nA small church in Jonesville, South Carolina has put this message up on the marquee out front:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Local news station <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wyff4.com\/news\/15948849\/detail.html\">WYFF4 reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Pastor Roger Byrd said that he just wanted to get people thinking. So last Thursday, he put a new message on the sign at the Jonesville Church of God&#8230;<br \/>\nByrd said that the message wasn&#8217;t meant to be racial or political.<br \/>\n&#8220;It&#8217;s simply to cause people to realize and to see what possibly could happen if we were to get someone in there that does not believe in Jesus Christ,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nWhen asked if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don&#8217;t know. He says he&#8217;s not. I hope he&#8217;s not. But I don&#8217;t know. And it&#8217;s just something to try to stir people&#8217;s minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Excuse me? He doesn&#8217;t know if Obama is a Muslim? Did Pastor Byrd sleep through the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy a few weeks back? There do happen to be a few online sources of information about Obama&#8217;s religious faith:<br \/>\n1. Obama&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/faith.barackobama.com\/page\/content\/faithhome\">faith web site<\/a>.<br \/>\n2. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/230\/story_23053_1.html\">Beliefnet&#8217;s FAQ on Obama&#8217;s faith<\/a><br \/>\n3. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/elections-2008\/sliming_obama.html\">Factcheck.org<\/a><br \/>\n4. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/politics\/obama\/muslim.asp\">Snopes<\/a><br \/>\nDoes Rev. Byrd not have access to Google? If not, he could have checked out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/s\/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=barack+obama\">Obama&#8217;s books<\/a>. What&#8217;s more disturbing is that Byrd reportedly raised the issue of the marquee message with his congregation, which voted unanimously to keep it.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It must be said up top that the South Carolina Democratic primary is long since over and that Barack Obama won it handily, so God-o-Meter won&#8217;t extrapolate too much about this story&#8217;s implications for Obama&#8217;s campaign going forward, including the fact that North Carolina hosts the next primary after today&#8217;s in Pennsylvania. Still, this stuff&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Church Asks &#039;Are Obama and Osama Bros?&#039; - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Church Asks &#039;Are Obama and Osama Bros?&#039; - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It must be said up top that the South Carolina Democratic primary is long since over and that Barack Obama won it handily, so God-o-Meter won&#8217;t extrapolate too much about this story&#8217;s implications for Obama&#8217;s campaign going forward, including the fact that North Carolina hosts the next primary after today&#8217;s in Pennsylvania. Still, this stuff&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-22T09:23:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/churchsign.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Church Asks 'Are Obama and Osama Bros?' - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Church Asks 'Are Obama and Osama Bros?' - God-O-Meter","og_description":"It must be said up top that the South Carolina Democratic primary is long since over and that Barack Obama won it handily, so God-o-Meter won&#8217;t extrapolate too much about this story&#8217;s implications for Obama&#8217;s campaign going forward, including the fact that North Carolina hosts the next primary after today&#8217;s in Pennsylvania. Still, this stuff&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-04-22T09:23:42+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/churchsign.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html","name":"Church Asks 'Are Obama and Osama Bros?' - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/churchsign.jpg","datePublished":"2008-04-22T09:23:42+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-22T09:23:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/churchsign.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/churchsign.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/04\/church-asks-are-obama-and-osam.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Church Asks &#8216;Are Obama and Osama Bros?&#8217;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}