Michele Bachmann left controversial church before campaign

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann quit her longtime church shortly before her presidential bid, potentially because the Lutheran church was part of a denomination that calls the papacy the "Antichrist."

CNN reported that Bachmann's request to leave Minnesota's Salem Lutheran Church was granted on June 21, roughly one week before she formally announced her presidential bid. She and her husband Marcus Bachmann, who also withdrew from the church, had reportedly been members for more than a decade, though they had not been attending services for the past two years.

Bachmann's campaign isn't commenting on the decision to leave the church, but it might reflect concern that her membership in it could anger Catholic voters. The church is a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, whose website says in part, "We identify the anti-Christ as the papacy. This is an historical judgment based on Scripture."

The Lutheran church is named after Martin Luther, the "Ninety-Five Theses" author who iinitiated the Protestant Reformation and opposed the papacy for obstructing the gospel.

As the Washington Post reports, Bachmann denied that she was anti-Catholic in a 2006 debate, saying, "It's abhorrent, it's religious bigotry. I love Catholics, I'm a Christian, and my church does not believe that the pope is the anti-Christ, that's absolutely false."

A spokesperson for the Synod told the Post that the notion that the papacy is the Antichrist is "not one of our driving views, and certainly not something that we preach from the pulpit."

Bachmann's decision to leave the church may be an attempt to avoid the sort of dustup that temporarily engulfed the presidential campaign of then-candidate Barack Obama over the comments of his onetime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.