A woman in New Mexico today offered President Obama some fresh chili peppers, as well as two equally hot questions:

Why are you a Christian?

What about abortion?

"I'm a Christian by choice," replied Obama, who has spent a good part of his public life fending off false claims he is a Muslim.

Obama said his family was not churchgoing, and "my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church."

"So I came to my Christian faith later in life," the president said, "and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead: being my brother's and sister's keeper, treating others as they treat me."

(All this after Obama told the woman he would accept some chili peppers because "I like spicy food, to go with your spicy questions.")

Other comments by Obama on religion:

"I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God." "But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people and do our best to help them find their own grace. And so that's what I strive to do. That's what I pray to do everyday. I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith." "But one thing that I want to emphasize, having spoken about something that relates to me very personally, as president of the United States, I'm also somebody who deeply believes that part of the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and of no faith. This is a country that is still predominantly Christian. But we have Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists and that their own path to grace is one that we have to revere and respect as much as our own."

As for abortion, Obama said he agrees with former president Bill Clinton that it should be "safe, legal and rare." He says:

"I think it's something all of us should recognize is a difficult, oftentimes tragic situation that families are wrestling with. I think the families and the women involved are the ones who should make the decisions, not the government. But I do think actually that there are a whole host of laws on the books ... such that you can have some restrictions, for example in late term abortions. And appropriately so."

(Posted by David Jackson)