The White House campaign to promote health care reform has been taking some pretty hard knocks lately from both opponents and allies.

   So on Wednesday President Obama looked to the heavens for help.

   He spoke on  a conference call of interfaith leaders and members of their congregations from around the country to try and dispel the distortions in the debate. He also encouraged their efforts in support of reform.

   “The one thing you all share is a moral conviction,” Obama said. “I know there has been a lot of misinformation in this debate and there are some folks out there who, frankly, are bearing false witness.”

    He likened the health care battle to the opposition faced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he pushed for Social Security and by President Lyndon Johnson when he fought for Medicare.

   “There have always been those who want to preserve the status quo,” Obama said.

   The president spoke at the end of the call. Pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders, as well as congregation members, spent the bulk of the 40-minute conference call offering personal stories about the toll on families struggling to pay medical bills.

    The call kicked off a "40 Days for Health Reform" campaign by more than 30 religious faiths and organizations to push for health reform legislation.

   “This isn’t about ideology or partisan politics,” said Dr. Joel Hunter, senior pastor at the 10,000-member Northland Church in Northland, Fla. “This is about people’s lives, people who lack health insurance or are afraid of losing what they  have…It is about who we are as a nation.”

   The leaders also talked about their efforts to build support for reform.

   Pastor Jennifer Thomas of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Kansas City said that 400 Lutheran leaders from Missouri and Kansas have backed health care reform.

   The Rev. Adam Hamilton of Church of the Resurrection in Leawood said his congregation will hold a health care forum Tuesday with representatives from the insurance industry, the medical community and others.

    “My hope is our people will come away not with the answer, but with a better understanding why health care reform is needed,” he said.

    Beside persistent opposition from Republicans, the White House has been under fire this week from Democratic liberals who have threatened to bolt if the president doesn’t insist on a government-run insurance option as one of the choices.

    Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said last weekend that it was “not the essential element.”

   Administration officials have been trying to downplay the comment.

   White House Domestic Policy Director Melody Barnes, who spoke on the call before Obama, said that, “he believes a public option is the best way” to make health insurance more accessible, but was "open to other good ideas. But the public option seems like the best way to lower costs and increase competition.”