Asked at an event in New Mexico why he's a Christian, President Barack Obama Tuesday said he chose the religion himself because he was inspired by the message and example of Jesus Christ.

"I’m a Christian by choice," Obama said when asked by a woman in Albuquerque.

"My family didn’t, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week.  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 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 brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, treating others as they would treat me.

"And 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 every day.  I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith.  And it’s -- but the one thing I want to emphasize, having spoken about something that obviously relates to me very personally, as President of the United States, I’m also somebody who deeply believes that the -- part of the bedrock strength of this company is that it embraces people of many faiths and of no faith -- that 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.  And that’s part of what makes this country what it is. "