Obama must have been nodding off during the sermon, he’s used to his pastor saying things like: “To say “I am a Christian” is not enough. Why? Because the Christianity of the slaveholder is not the Christianity of the slave. The God to whom the slaveholders pray as they ride on the decks of the slave ship is not the God to whom the enslaved are praying as they ride beneath the decks on that slave ship.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and his family have celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at morning worship service.

Obama, his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia sat in the second row of Washington’s historic Zion Baptist Church, as bright sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows.

The church commemorated the civil rights leader’s 83rd birthday with a photo of King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the words “I Have a Dream” on the program cover. A deacon welcomed the first family and read a passage from King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

The sermon by Rev. Keith Byrd came from Matthew 5, which describes the salt of the earth. Byrd urged the congregation to “preserve our morals, preserve our values” like salt amid political, social and economic turmoil.