For the second time during the presidential campaign, a group of African-American ministers in North Carolina has criticized Franklin Graham for challenging the spiritual beliefs of President Barack Obama, accusing the evangelist Monday of promoting a narrow form of Christianity that supports a politically conservative point of view.

Meeting in Charlotte, the group read an open letter to Graham that comes in response to a series of full-page ads that bear a photograph of his father, Billy Graham, and ask voters to elect candidates who support "biblical principles."

In comments to the Observer last week, Graham said his 93-year-old father supported the message, which endorses candidates who support the nation of Israel, "the sanctity of life" and "the biblical definition of marriage."

Franklin Graham went on to say that Obama's support for gay marriage and abortion rights challenges "God's standard" and says "it's OK for people to sin."

He said he has cast an early ballot for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, whose positions "are more in line with the moral teachings that I believe in." During a meeting this month at his home in Montreat, the elder Graham offered to help Romney "any way I can."

State NAACP President William Barber accused Graham of "being seduced by the sirens of money and power," and of "cherry-picking the easy parts of Christianity" that serve his partisan politics. In doing so, Barber said, Graham has ignored the broader messages of the Bible to help the poor, feed the hungry and treat the sick.

"These texts, Brother Graham, are so primary to our faith tradition but so secondary in your critique," Barber said, surrounded by more than a dozen other ministers. Why do some Christian conservatives "say so little about what God says so much, and so much about what God says so little? To exclude this focus and try to make a claim of concern for Christian values is hollow at best and heretical at worst."