The hosts of Fox & Friends were incensed that President Obama quoted scripture in a primetime address detailing his upcoming executive action on immigration, challenging him to a “scripture-showdown” and claiming it's “repugnant” for Obama to “lecture us on Christian faith.” But just 48 hours earlier, the Fox hosts were lamenting that Obama doesn't make public expressions of his Christian faith often enough.
Obama quoted lines from the Bible in a November 20 address, explaining the nation's responsibility to reform unfair immigration enforcement policies. He declared, “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger -- we were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.”
His use of scripture did not sit well with the hosts of Fox & Friends the next day. Co-host Tucker Carlson called it “repugnant” and argued, “For this guy specifically, the president who spent his career defending late-term abortion, among other things, lecturing us on Christian faith? That's too much. That is too much.” Elisabeth Hasselbeck attempted to rebut the scripture Obama used with scripture of her own, quoting verses from Proverbs and saying she is “going to get into a scripture-showdown.” According to Hasselbeck, Obama used the Bible to guilt people into supporting his executive action, and that's “not what the scholars behind the Bible would interpret as proper use, perhaps.”
It was only 48 hours prior to their November 21 broadcast that Fox & Friends criticized Obama for not espousing Christian values often enough.
On November 19, the hosts promoted a “fiery” online op-ed penned by Chuck Norris, echoing his outrage that Obama had not publicly opposed a local school district's decision to remove references to religious holidays on the schools' calendars. The hosts then aired video of former President Ronald Reagan talking about Christmas and his Christian faith, saying, “Chuck Norris' point was, remember the time when American presidents weren't afraid to talk about traditional values, as Ronald Reagan did back in 1981.” Hasselbeck remarked that Reagan's religious rhetoric gave her goosebumps.
References to his Christian faith are commonplace in Obama's public speeches, but that hasn't stopped Fox & Friends from attempting to build a brand around questioning Obama's religious values, even pushing the 'Obama is a secret Muslim' myth.