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’t extrapolate too much about this story’s implications for Obama’s campaign going forward, including the fact that North Carolina hosts the next primary after today’s in Pennsylvania. Still, this stuff must drive the Obama camp crazy.
A small church in Jonesville, South Carolina has put this message up on the marquee out front:

Obama, Osama, hmm, are they brothers?

Local news station WYFF4 reports:

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…
Byrd said that the message wasn’t meant to be racial or political.
“It’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,” he said.
When asked if he believes that Barack Obama is Muslim, Byrd said, “I don’t know. See it asks a question: Are they brothers? In other words, is he Muslim ? I don’t know. He says he’s not. I hope he’s not. But I don’t know. And it’s just something to try to stir people’s minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or to offend anybody.”

Excuse me? He doesn’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’s religious faith:
1. Obama’s faith web site.
2. Beliefnet’s FAQ on Obama’s faith
3. Factcheck.org
4. Snopes
Does Rev. Byrd not have access to Google? If not, he could have checked out Obama’s books. What’s more disturbing is that Byrd reportedly raised the issue of the marquee message with his congregation, which voted unanimously to keep it.

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