Churches welcome Obamas to join them

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By Matthew Barakat ASSOCIATED PRESS

D.C. churches have started extending invitations to President-elect Barack Obama and his family, touting their black roots, their ties to presidents past and to Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama and his family will have plenty of choices within a short walk of their new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Just across Lafayette Square from the White House is St. John's Church, an Episcopal parish known as the "Church of the Presidents," where presidents as far back as James Madison have worshipped. St. John's has a standing invitation: Pew 54 is the President's Pew, reserved for the country's leader.

President Bush occasionally went to St. John's but rarely attended services in the District.

Whatever choice Mr. Obama makes it will be in light of his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who was Mr. Obama's pastor for 20 years at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Mr. Obama, a Democrat, resigned from Trinity during the presidential campaign after inflammatory comments by Mr. Wright from the pulpit became a campaign issue.

Nick Shapiro, a spokesman for Mr. Obama's transition, declined to discuss which church the Obamas might attend.

Mr. Obama has spoken frequently about the importance of his Christian faith. In his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," he wrote that "the historically black church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts, or that you relinquish your hold on this world. ... You needed to come to church precisely because you were of this world, not apart from it."

Despite those words, Mr. Obama has attended church sparingly in the past several months. Since winning the election, he has spent Sunday mornings at the gym.

At Metropolitan AME Church, a historic, predominantly black congregation six blocks from the White House, senior pastor Ronald Braxton says parishioners are excited about the possibility that Mr. Obama, wife Michelle, and their daughters - Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 - might attend services with them.

Mr. Braxton said it would be good if Mr. Obama resumed worshipping at a congregation rooted in the black community.