As an example, he said, "And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles."

This statement caused controversy among Evangelical Christians because it seemed as though Obama was being cynical about what could appear to be confecting statements in scripture.

Obama's supporters say, however, that he was not making fun of those scriptures but merely using them to illustrate the point of his speech, which was to point out the complexity of holding religious values in high regard but trying to reconcile them with public policy.