During an address at a campaign rally in Ohio on March 2, Barack Obama professed: “I am a Christian. I am a devout Christian. I pray to Jesus every night and try to go to church as much as I can when they’re not working me.”

Obama regretted that he has been too busy during the election campaign to attend church on a regular basis. Nonetheless, he insisted: “My faith is important to me. It’s not something that I try to push on other people. But it’s something that helps to guide my life and my values.”

In this same speech, Obama reaffirmed his support for abortion on demand and civil marriages for same-sex couples. How, though, can an honest person call himself a devout Christian, while endorsing the mass slaughter of babies in the womb and the gay-rights agenda?

Obama does not perceive any difficulty. Referring to his support for same-sex “marriage,” he said: “If people find that controversial, then I would refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think, you know, is in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.”

In what Obama derides as an obscure passage in the first chapter of Romans, Paul depicts the fate of people who “exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” Paul wrote: “For this reason, God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

Obama should know that Paul was not unique among the biblical writers in holding this viewpoint. The sinfulness of same-sex genital relations is reiterated in several other passages of the Old and New Testaments.

Furthermore, there is nothing in the Sermon on the Mount that contradicts Paul’s teaching on sexual morality. To the contrary, the Gospels attest that Jesus likewise repudiated any form of sexual intercourse outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

A few years ago, a religious reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times asked Obama: “Do you believe in sin?” Obama responded: “Yes.” The reporter followed up: “What is sin?” And Obama replied: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

That’s typical of liberal Christians: like all post-modernists, they assume that the difference between right and wrong is defined by arbitrary personal values rather than universal moral principles.

Instead of upholding the moral commandments of God revealed in the Bible, liberal Christians and postmodernists respect only their own values as defined by their own reasoning and taste.

Thus, Obama insists there is nothing wrong with abortion on demand or same-sex “marriage.” “That’s my view,” he says. “I respect people who may disagree, but I certainly don’t think it makes me less Christian.” Is that so? Other Christians might reasonably disagree.

Obama is a longstanding member of the United Church of Christ, an ultra-liberal denomination that backs same-sex “marriage.” Even so, Obama’s church still professes to uphold the Heidelberg Catechism, a classic profession of the reformed Christian faith. That’s ironic, inasmuch as by the standards of the Heidelberg Catechism, Obama and the leaders of his denomination are heretics.

The Heidelberg Catechism emphasizes throughout that sin consists in violating the commandments of God. It has nothing to do with any failure to align with values of one’s own making.

To the question: “What do we do that is good?” the Heidelberg Catechism responds:

“Only that which arises out of true faith, conforms to God’s law and is done for his glory and not that which is based on what we think is right.”

Quite so. Obama professes to be a born-again Christian. He needs to think again about the meaning of Christianity. He should seriously study the Bible, earnestly reflect upon the creeds of the Christian church and closely ponder the foundational documents of his own denomination.

Only in this way is Obama ever likely to understand that no faithful Christian, Catholic or Protestant, can vote in good conscience for any politician who flouts the sanctity of human life and the commandments of God.