U.S. President Obama says he starts his day with a devotional that the director of his Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships initiative, Pentecostal pastor Joshua DuBois, sends to his BlackBerry each day.
And though he was in the habit of praying every night before going to bed, Obama says since becoming president, he prays “all the time now.”
“I've got a lot of stuff on my plate and I need guidance all the time,” he told ABC News' Terry Moran in an interview for “Nightline.”
“I think that every president who’s had [this job] is constantly humbled by the degree to which there are a lot of issues out there and the notion that one person alone can solve all these problems I think you're cured of that illusion very quickly,” Obama added. “This is something where you just hope that you are aligning your work with His purposes and that you're attuned to the needs of the people you're there to serve.”
Prior to winning the presidency, Obama had informed the public that Christ “is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis” for him.
“I know that I don’t walk alone, and I know that if I can get myself out of the way, that I can maybe carry out in some small way what He intends,” he said during his appearance last August at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.
Though the Obamas are still without a home church, the president reiterated Thursday that he and his family have been attending services at Camp David’s nondenominational Evergreen Chapel, which insiders say could provide a robust worship community for the president despite not being a membership congregation.
As he has in past interviews, Obama said Thursday that his team is “still trying to figure out how to move this big apparatus called the presidency without being hugely disruptive to congregations.”
“How do we time that, how do we think about that? That's something we're still sorting out,” he confessed.
The Obamas have been without a home church since withdrawing their membership last May from Trinity United Church of Christ after controversy arose over sermons that his long-time pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, had preached in 2001 and 2003.
In the sermons, Wright lashed out against the U.S. government, accusing it of “purposely infect[ing] African American men with syphilis” and “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.” He also suggested that American had brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon itself.
“America's chickens are coming home to roost," Wright said after bringing up the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.
Obama, in response, said he was “outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle.”
