Christianity Today online editor Sarah Pulliam is in Denver for the Democratic National Convention. She'll also be in Minneapolis for the Republican meeting next week. She will mostly be posting over at our politics blog, so be sure you're not only watching this space. Her work there has already started with coverage of today's interfaith gathering.

Posted by Ted Olsen at August 24, 2008 | Comments (16)

Relevant Magazine founder and CEO Cameron Strang and Florida mega-church pastor Joel Hunter will pray at the Democratic National Convention later this month, according to a DNC press release.

Strang will give the benediction on Monday, August 25 and Hunter will give the benediction on Thursday, August 28. Sojourners head Jim Wallis will moderate the faith caucus on "Common Ground on Common Good" and "Faith in 2009: How an Obama Administration will Engage People of Faith" on Tuesday, August 26.

David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University, will be a panelist on the caucus on "Moral Values Issues Abroad" on Thursday, August 28. The full list of religious speakers is below.

Evening invocations and benedictions

Monday, August 25
Invocation: Polly Baca, Catholic, Greeley, CO
Benediction: Cameron Strang, Evangelical, Orlando, FL
Tuesday, August 26
Invocation: Dr. Cynthia Hale, Disciples of Christ, Decatur, GA
Benediction: Revs. Jin Ho Kang and Young Sook Kang, Methodist, Aurora, CO
Wednesday, August 27
Invocation: Archbishop Demetrios, Greek Orthodox, New York, NY
Benediction: Sr. Catherine Pinkerton, Catholic, Cleveland, OH
Thursday, August 28
Invocation: Rabbi David Saperstein, Union for Reform Judaism, Washington, DC
Benediction: Pastor Joel Hunter, Evangelical, Northland, FL

Faith caucus meetings

Tuesday, August 26
Common Ground on Common Good
Moderator: Rev. Jim Wallis
Panelists: Dr. Douglas W. Kmiec, Rabbi Jack Moline, Rev. Jennifer Kottler, Bishop Wilfredo DeJesus, Rev. John Hunter

Faith in 2009: How an Obama Administration will Engage People of Faith
Moderator: Rev. Jim Wallis
Panelists: Rabbi David Saperstein, professor John Dilulio, Rev. Otis Moss, Jr.

Thursday, August 28

Moral Values Issues Abroad
Moderator: Joshua Dubois, Obama campaign’s director of religious affairs
Panelists: Dr. Preeta Bansal, Dr. David Gushee, Sr. Simone Campbell, Dr. Claude d’Estree

Getting Out the Faith Vote
Moderator: Joshua Dubois, Obama campaign’s director of religious affairs
Panelists: Rev. Romal Tune, Mark Linton, Rev. C Welton Gaddy, Rev. Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Rabbi Steve Gutow

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (36)

The transcript of the Saddleback forum is available here. For more election coverage, bookmark CT's politics blog.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (14)

One of the more surprising questions from Rick Warren was, "Which Supreme Court justice would you not have nominated?"

Barack Obama said Clarence Thomas.

"I don't think that he was as strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution. I would not nominate Justice Scalia although I don't think there's any doubt about his intellectual brilliance because he and I just disagree, you know. ... One of the most important jobs of I believe the Supreme Court is to guard against the encroachment of the executive branch on the power of the other branches and I think that he has been a little bit too willing and too eager to give an administration whether it's mine or George Bush's more power than I think the constitution originally intended."

John McCain said Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, Justice Souter, and Justice Stevens.

"This nomination should be based on the criteria of proven record of strictly adhering to the constitution ... and not legislating from the bench. Justice Alito and Justice Roberts are two of my most recent favorites. I’m proud of President Bush for nominating them."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (6)

CBN's David Brody interviewed Sen. Barack Obama right after the Saddleback forum, and when he asked about the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, Obama became pretty heated.

"They have not been telling the truth ... I have said repeatedly that I would be completely support of the federal bill, which is to say that you would provide assistance to any infant that was born. ... That was not the bill that was presented at the state level. It was trying to undermine Roe v. Wade."

Brody will post the full video later tonight.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (7)

Conservative evangelicals have raised John McCain's support of embryonic stem-cell research in opposition to his candidacy.

McCain addressed it briefly in his response to Rick Warren's "worldview questions." "For those of us in the pro-life community, this is a great struggle. … I’ve come down on the side of stem cell research, but I’m wildly optimistic that skin cell research … will make this debate an academic one."

Rick Warren: At what point is baby is entitled to human rights?
John McCain's answer: At the moment of conception. I have a 25 year pro-life record in congress, in the senate. This presidency will have pro-life policies. That’s my commitment to you.
Warren's answer: We won’t go longer on that one.

Warren: Define marriage.
McCain: A union between man and woman, between one man and one woman. The court overturned the definition of marriage. I believe they were wrong. I’m a federalist. I believe states should make that decision. That doesn’t mean that people can’t enter into legal agreements, that they don’t’ have the rights of all citizens.

When asked a question on evil, McCain said, "If I have to go to gates and hell and back, I will get Osama Bin Laden."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (19)

Rick Warren's question: How does faith work out for you on a daily basis?

John McCain's answer: "It means I’m saved and forgiven."
He then told a story about worshiping with another Christian during his captivity in Vietnam. On Christmas, a North Vietnamese guard walked with him in the yard, and drew a cross in the dirt and quickly scratched it out.

"For a minute there, it was just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (1)

Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama just stood on the same platform for the first time this campaign.

One of the first questions Rick Warren posed to the candidates was: What would be the great moral failure in your life? What would be the great moral failure in America.

McCain said his personal failure was the failure of his first marriage but didn't say anything further on it. The country's greatest failure was its own self-interest.

"I think after 9/11, my friends, we should have told Americans to join the Peace Corps, expand the military, serve a cause greater than your self-interest," he said.

Obama's answer about himself:

"I had a difficult youth ... I experimented with drugs and drank ... I trace this to a certain selfishness on my point ... I couldn't focus on other people. The process of me growing up is to recognize that it’s not about me."

On the country's greatest failure:

"We still don't abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me. That basic principle applies to poverty to racism and sexism. It applies to not thinking about ladders of opportunity to get in the middle class. As wealthy and powerful as we are don't spend enough time thinking about the least of these."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (2)

Pastor Rick Warren posed a question on abortion to Sen. Barack Obama.

Warren asks, "At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?"

Here is some of Obama's answer:

"Whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity is above my pay grade.

"Let me speak more generally about the issue of abortion. One thing that I am absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical element to this issue. ... I am pro-choice...not because I'm pro-abortion. But ultimately I do not think women make these decisions causally.

"I am for limits on late-term abortion.

"If you believe that life begins at conceptions, and you are consistent in that belief, then I can’t argue with you on that. That is a core issue of faith for you. What I can do is say are there ways to work together to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
As an example of that is, how do we provide the resources for women to keep a child? … Have we given them the options of adoption?"

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (2)

Twelve percent of respondents believe Barack Obama is Muslim, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

Rick Warren asked Obama: What does it mean to you to trust in Christ on a daily basis.

"I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed by him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis. I know that I don't walk alone. I know if I can get myself out of the way, I can maybe carry out in some small way what he intends. Those things that I have on a fairly regular basis will get washed way. It also means an sense of obligation to embrace not through just words but deeds the expectations God has for us. That means thinking about the least of these. It means acting justly, loving mercy, walking humbly."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (0)

At the Saddleback Civil Forum, Obama just said that he opposes a federal marriage amendment because he thinks it's not something the federal constitution should decide. It's a state issue, he says.

He also says he supports civil unions, but thinks marriage is between a man and a woman.

So why does he oppose California's Proposition 8? It only deals with marriage, but would allow civil unions.

If "leaving the issue to the states" doesn't mean allowing a state to define marriage, what does it mean?

Too bad Warren didn't ask a follow up question on it, considering it's his own state.

Update: Warren, who said he'd ask the same questions of both candidates, just asked McCain about the California Supreme Court decision and Proposition 8. McCain says he thinks the states rather than the federal government should define marriage, but does support a federal marriage amendment if necessary. He has also supported Prop. 8.

Posted by Ted Olsen at August 16, 2008 | Comments (59)

California mega-church pastor Rick Warren will interview the presumptive presidential candidates at 9 p.m. Eastern tonight.

The candidates will probably not introduce new political stances, but they may pitch new ideas of how to respond to issues like abortion or the environment.

So far, though, it seems as though several people are more interested in the questions Warren will ask. Warren has been kind of a poster child for evangelicals who have expanded their "agenda" from abortion and homosexuality to HIV/AIDS and the environment.

"I think Rick is in an unenviable position in that he stands to get attacked from the right and the left, based on what direction he takes," Mark DeMoss, an evangelical public relations specialist told Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press. "As an evangelical, I am much more interested in his list of questions than in either of their answers."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at August 16, 2008 | Comments (0)

I mentioned last month that John McCain's trump card for socially conservative Christians would be his well-established opposition to abortion. But that just doesn't rally the troops like it used to.

In 2004, to stoke turnout among conservatives, Karl Rove engineered the addition of anti-gay-marriage voter initiatives to the ballots in Ohio and other states; last week, though, when the California Supreme Court voted to allow gay marriage in that state, only hard-core activists were able to muster much outrage. When it comes to the Constitution, McCain is on the wrong side of the voters, and of history

Save for California, I don't know any states that will be voting on gay marriage in November. That could make it even harder for McCain to win over those evangelical Christians the NYT reports remain wary of the presumptive Republican nominee:

Lori Viars, an evangelical activist in Warren County, Ohio, essentially put her life on hold in the fall of 2004 to run a phone bank for President Bush. Her efforts helped the president's ambitious push to turn out evangelicals and win that critical swing state in a close election.

But Ms. Viars, who is among a cluster of socially conservative activists in Ohio being courted by Senator John McCain's campaign through regular e-mail messages, is taking a wait-and-see attitude for now toward Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

"I think a lot of us are in a holding pattern," said Ms. Viars, who added that she wanted to see whom Mr. McCain picked for his running mate.

(skip)

The campaign has been peppering over 600 socially conservative grass-roots and national leaders with regular e-mail messages - highlighting, for example, Mr. McCain's statement criticizing a May 15 decision by the California Supreme Court overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage, or his recent speech on his judicial philosophy. It has also held briefings for small groups of conservative leaders before key speeches. Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain's senior advisers, recently sat down with a dozen prominent evangelical leaders in Washington, where he emphasized, among other things, Mr. McCain's consistent anti-abortion voting record.

Mr. McCain's outreach to Christian conservatives has been a quiet courting, reflecting a balancing act: his election hopes rely on drawing in the political middle and Democrats who might be turned off should he woo the religious right too heavily by, for instance, highlighting his anti-abortion position more on the campaign trail.

"If McCain tried Bush's strategy of just mobilizing the base, he would almost certainly fall short," said John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "Because the Republican brand name is less popular and the conservative base is restive, McCain has special needs to reach out to independent and moderate voters, but, of course, he can't completely neglect the evangelical and conservative base."

The instrumental role of evangelicals in Mr. Bush's victory in 2004 over Senator John Kerry is an oft-repeated tale at this point. Mr. Bush's openness about his personal faith and stances on social issues earned him a following among evangelicals, who represented about a quarter of the electorate in 2004. Exit polls in the 2004 election found that 78 percent of white "born again" or evangelical Protestants had voted for Mr. Bush.

In contrast, Mr. McCain's relationship with evangelicals has long been troubled. In 2000, when he was running against Mr. Bush for the Republican nomination, Mr. McCain castigated Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance."

In a sign of the lingering distrust, Mr. McCain finished last out of nine Republican candidates in a straw poll last year at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, a gathering for socially conservative activists.

James C. Dobson, the influential founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family, released a statement in February, when Mr. McCain was on the verge of securing the Republican nomination, affirming that he would not vote for Mr. McCain and would instead stay home if he became the nominee. Dr. Dobson later softened his stance and said he would vote but has remained critical of Mr. McCain.

"For John McCain to be competitive, he has to connect with the base to the point that they're intense enough that they're contagious," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. "Right now they're not even coughing."

We've heard about a million times how important socially conservative Christians -- often overgeneralized as evangelicals -- were to transforming Gov. Bush to President Bush. Maybe the machine that Falwell and Robertson and Dobson made is wearing out, but can a Republican actually attain the presidency without their backing?

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at June 9, 2008 | Comments (14)

I was at a wedding Saturday, and by the time I returned to my computer the next day, Barack Obama's split from Trinity United Church of Christ was as appetizing as a cup of cold coffee, reported ad nauseum on the cover of the LA Times, on NPR, in the NY Times and everywhere else.

This didn't come as much of a surprise considering the steady stream of bad news from the church's pulpit, and it overshadowed a much more interesting story this weekend involving Christianity and Obama. (The fact it has received little attention has a lot more to do with the media's bloodlust than news judgment.) Toward the end of news conference Saturday a reporter asked, "Can you give us some context of how your spirituality, your practice of religion factors into your decision making process as a leader, as a politician?"

I've stated over and over that I believe the marriage between religion and politics is a precarious, insincere affair. But this reporter asked just about the only relevant question on the topic. Here is Obama's response, courtesy of Time magazine and via the DMN religion blog:

Well, look, obviously as a Christian I believe in the values that are laid out in Scripture. I reflect on them often. I reflect on the lessons of Scripture as I’m going through the day. I pray frequently. I wrestle with doubts and try to figure out whether I’m doing the right thing, am I operating in an honest and moral way that is true to my religious precepts? Sometimes I may falter. So I guess the point is, I approach my work or I guess my faith is part of everything that I do. And I don’t think there’s a clear separation between my faith and how I try to live my life. And I certainly think that part of my motivation in the work that I do is a belief in what I consider the core precept of Christianity in addition to Christ dying for your sins and that is treating your brothers and sisters as you would have them treat you. A sense of empathy and a belief in the golden rule. And that’s what I try to apply to my work and what I do every day.

In this, Obama says very little while saying a lot. But, reading between the lines, it is apparent that while Barack Obama may be a religious man, he is not selling his presidential bid as one ordained by God. Religion to Obama seems to be something you practice, the way to communicate with God, even if you can't easily explain it to others. And that, rambling and Trinity-related rantings aside, is quite refreshing.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at June 3, 2008 | Comments (42)

One day after Sen. Barack Obama announced that he and his family were leaving Trinity United Church of Christ, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, the politically outspoken, white priest of St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church in Chicago's South Side, apologized for comments he made last Sunday, May 25, as Trinity's guest preacher. Among those comments, made public last week in a YouTube video, were that Hillary Clinton's infamous tears were from her fear that a black man might take the presidency, and that "America is the greatest sin against God" for its perpetual racism.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the firebrand priest showed an "unusually contrite and cautious" attitude at yesterday's Mass as he appealed to his parishioners for forgiveness:

"I apologize for the words that I chose. I apologize for my dramatization that was, for many people who do not know me, simply typical dramatics I often use in sermons. . . . I apologize for anyone who was offended and who thought it to be mockery, that was neither my intent, nor my heart."

Meanwhile, Trinity UCC's Sunday service saw the passing of the baton from Jeremiah Wright to the Rev. Otis Moss III, who has been preparing to take Wright's role for over a year. As some 2,000 worshipers entered the sanctuary, they received pamphlets penned by Moss titled "The Declaration of Interdependence." The pamphlet was in part meant to provide emotional support after a wearying six months for Trinity's members. It read:

"We, the community of Trinity, are concerned, hurt, shocked, dismayed, frustrated, fearful and heartbroken. . . . Our hearts break at this moment and my limited vocabulary is inadequate to describe the range of emotions flooding our spirits at this time. We are caught, it seems, in a strange Greek tragic-comedy. In the words of Jean Paul-Sartre, with ?no exit.' We are a wounded people and the bruises from our encounter with history have scarred our very souls."

Neither Sen. Obama nor the two pastors' incendiary sermons were mentioned in Trinity's service yesterday.

Obama announced Saturday that he was leaving the church in part because "every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will imputed to me even if they totally conflict with my long-held views." The 20-year member of Trinity is now about 65 delegates short of receiving the Democratic nomination.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at June 2, 2008 | Comments (11)

Sen. Barack Obama has ended his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, attempting to disassociate himself from comments pastors have made in the church's pulpit.

Trinity was where Obama had his conversion experience, his marriage, and his children's baptisms.

The resignation comes one month after he broke ties with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Rev. Michael Pfleger recently made racially charged comments where Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show" in a guest sermon at Obama's church.

"It's clear that now that I am a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements, and principles," he said today.

Religious leaders have made campaigning difficult for Obama and Sen. John McCain. Last week, McCain rejected endorsements from Texas pastor John Hagee and Ohio pastor Rod Parsley.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam at May 31, 2008 | Comments (13)

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain just rejected Pastor John Hagee's earlier endorsement.

The controversial Texas pastor has made several anti-Catholic remarks in his sermons. Hagee also withdrew his endorsement. The Huffington Post is reporting that in a late 1990s sermon, Hagee said that "the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine."

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well," McCain said in a statement Thursday.

In his statement today, McCain added that his relationship with Hagee did not compare with Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today," McCain said.

McCain also rejected and repudiated Columbus pastor Rod Parsley, who has also made controversial statements and endorsed McCain. McCain had called Parsley a spiritual adviser earlier this year.

Hagee and Parsley withdrew their endorsements.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam at May 22, 2008 | Comments (15)

Sen. Barack Obama strongly denounced Jeremiah Wright Tuesday after his former pastor made more controversial statements on Monday.

"His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church," Obama said. "They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs."

Obama also wanted to clarify the relationship details. "He was never my 'spiritual mentor.' He was -- he was my pastor. And so to some extent, how, you know, the -- the press characterized in the past that relationship, I think, wasn't accurate." It's interesting that he makes this distinction for someone who guided him through his marriage, his children's baptism, and prayer for the campaign.

Wright has caused a lot of chaos for the Obama campaign for the last several weeks. On Monday, Wright appeared at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and fueled the fire.

Obama responded to some of Wright's remarks: "[W]hen he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today."

On Monday, Wright said he hopes the controversy "just might mean that the reality of the African-American church will no longer be invisible. It is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright - it's an attack on the black church."

But Obama denounced those remarks as well. "I did not view the initial round of soundbites, that triggered this controversy, as an attack on the black church," Obama said. "I viewed it as a simplification of who he was, a caricature of who he was and, you know, more than anything, something that piqued a lot of political interest."

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Wright said in a sermon, "America's chickens are coming home to roost" after the United States. A reporter asked him what he meant and Wright replied, "Have you heard the whole sermon? No. You haven't heard the whole sermon. That nullifies that question."

When asked if he was apologetic for suggesting the U.S. should be damned, he said, "God doesn't bless everything, God condemns something - and d-e-m-n, ?demn,' is where we get the word ?damn.' God damns some practices." He also said that American soldiers in Iraq died "over a lie" and the war is "unjust."

Obama made it clear Tuesday that he wants nothing to do with the remarks. "But the insensitivity and the outrageousness, of his statements and his performance in the question-and-answer period yesterday, I think, shocked me," he said.

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam at April 29, 2008 | Comments (20)

This is now available on our website as an article.

Posted by Ted Olsen at April 14, 2008 | Comments (0)

A political storm is brewing over Sen. Barack Obama's recent statements. Last Sunday, Obama was explaining his difficulty with winning over working-class voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:

"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama said.

The comments were posted Friday on The Huffington Post, creating a wave of criticism from Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. John McCain, and other politicians as the April 22 Pennsylvania primary draws near.

"The people of faith I know don't ?cling to' religion because they're bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich," Clinton said at a rally in Indianapolis.

Now, Obama is spending time explaining his remarks.

"Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," Obama said in a phone interview on Saturday with the Winston-Salem Journal. "But the underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so."

He continued, "People feel like Washington's not listening to them, and as a consequence, they find that they can only rely on the traditions and the things that have been important to them for generation after generation. Faith. Family. Traditions like hunting. And they get frustrated."

For a candidate who has been outspoken about faith, religion has created hurdles for his campaign. Just a few months ago, he was squelching rumors about whether he was a Muslim and in March, he was defending his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It'll be interesting to see whether he addresses these recent remarks at Sunday's Compassion Forum at Messiah College.

The audio of his Sunday statement is available below:

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Posted by Sarah Pulliam at April 13, 2008 | Comments (39)

James Dobson said in February that he would not cast a presidential vote if John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama were the presidential candidates.

However, he sent an e-mail alert this week that was titled "Dr. Dobson: 'I Will Certainly Vote'."

Dan Gilgoff provides the text of the alert on his Beliefnet blog.

Dr. James Dobson told Sean Hannity on Sunday night he is going to vote in the November election ? ending weeks of speculation that he would sit on the sidelines over his policy disagreements with the two major parties' candidates for the White House.

On Hannity's America on the Fox News Channel, Dr. Dobson told his longtime friend he definitely plans to cast a ballot this year.

"Let me just say that I will certainly vote, Sean," he said. "I think we have a God-given responsibility to vote, and there are all of the candidates and the issues down the ballot that we have an obligation to weigh in on and let our voices be heard."

With Colorado's proposed ballots, it's no surprise Dobson will want to weigh in on ballots like the proposed Colorado Human Life Amendment that would define personhood as a fertilized egg. What he didn't say was whether he would vote for a presidential candidate.

Dobson's recent statement isn't drawing the same media attention that it did on Feb. 4. What he did say then included, "I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."

"I certainly can't vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life."

Ralph Nader has been added to the ballot since his comments.

Interestingly, the original website link to the Citizen Link about his February statements now contains an error and is no longer listed on the news archives.

Dobson also sent a statement to the Wall Street Journal criticizing McCain.

"... [McCain] reiterated his support for governmental intervention in the global warming debate, proposed shutting down Guantanamo, blamed the U.S military for torturing prisoners of war and promised to pander to our European allies before defending America's interests around the world. These policies frustrated conservatives, whom McCain seems to have written off."

Dobson has received a lot of criticism for his February statement. He is particularly concerned with McCain's pro-embryonic stem-cell stance.

As for John McCain, Dr. Dobson responded with a question of his own when Hannity said he had received assurances from the Arizona senator that he would keep the pro-life and pro-marriage planks in the GOP's party platform.

"Did he give you a commitment about embryonic stem-cell research?" Dr. Dobson asked.
"We did not get that," Hannity replied.

"But that's an important one for me," Dr. Dobson explained. "And you can't really call yourself pro-life if you're in favor of killing those babies."

50 Percent of CT readers supported McCain in a CT poll released Tuesday, asking readers for whom they plan to vote. This compares to the 26 percent he received in a poll on March 3, when Mike Huckabee led with 31 percent. In the latest poll, he leads Obama (31 percent), Clinton (7 percent), and Ron Paul (4 percent).

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at April 3, 2008 | Comments (19)

Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for President, was in Philadelphia today for a major speech on race.

Here's a link to the original speech transcript as given to the news media prior to the speech. Be sure to read (or better yet listen to) this speech. I think it's a rhetorical high water mark for the Democratic primary season that I am convinced will resolve itself well before the Democratic National Convention this summer.

Why a speech on race now?

Less than a week ago, video clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons (including lines such as, "G-Damn America") began to show up on You Tube and other places on the net. Wright, the recently retired pastor of Chicago's Trinity UCC, a megachurch, Afrocentric congregation, has been a spiritual father to Obama in more ways than one. (Here's one link to one of the many You Tube video clips.)

After the clips surfaced, conservative media, such as Fox News, pushed this story into the national conversation, creating a domino effect of media attention. In recent days, Obama has given major interviews to Chicago news media, explaining why he rejects Wright's comments, but stops short of condemning Wright himself.

This is a tricky line to draw. In Philadelphia, Obama commented about Rev. Wright, saying:

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America, to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

A high-five to Sen. Obama for addressing the racial divisions in America at a time when politicians use slippery language to get off the hook on race. The part of the Obama speech that is less likely to gain careful examination comes in this phrase:

....opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

So, take a short detour with me into Game Theory, in particular zero-sum and non-zero-sum situations. That's what Obama is getting at. When winners and losers in any society are determined by the color of their skin or ethnicity, then a fundamentally unjust, zero-sum situation results.

Defining this problem is just one element of game theory here. The other, harder thing to understand is the non-zero-sum situation, otherwise known as a "win-win" outcome. (In competitive sports, we are looking for one winner and one loser at the end of the game. Chess is the classic, zero-sum game.)

But in America, we believe everyone should have "a piece of the American dream"-- a good job, owning a home, public safety, good education, and a secure retirement. So the vision that Obama is casting here is really not about "pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye," but "pie now," a bigger pie, and fair play in which each person gets a fair shot at achieving the American dream.

And, when politicians emotively talk about non-zero-sum, win-win situations, they deliver lines that invariably draw on biblical themes.

In Obama's speech, he does this by saying:

"In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand--that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."

Isn't the non-zero-sum culture (as addressed in the Psalm 133, Amos 5:24, or Acts 2:42+) one of the most persistent ideas in the entire narrative of Scripture?

Posted by Tim Morgan at March 18, 2008 | Comments (27)

Mike Huckabee withdrew from the race tonight after Sen. John McCain clinched key victories today.

"It's now important that we turn our attention not to what could have been or what we wanted to have been but what now must be, and that is a united party," Huckabee said in his concession speech.

The former Baptist pastor drew attention after his win in Iowa and surprised some with his success on Super Tuesday. He said tonight that he only had a staff of about 30 people. "No one has ever gotten this far with such limited resources," he told a Texas rally. However, Huckabee never drew the same kind of evangelical support as President Bush, who took 78 percent of the evangelical vote in 2004.

Huckabee appealed some evangelicals who were dissatisfied with McCain. However, Brett O'Donnell, a spokesman for McCain's campaign, told CT earlier that evangelicals will likely support the senator once he wins the nomination.

The most recent Christianity Today online poll that opened yesterday show 31 percent of CT readers supporting Huckabee, with McCain and Sen. Barack Obama tied at 26 percent.

Huckabee's future is uncertain, but he is sometimes mentioned in lists of McCain's possible vice presidents. The Washington Times writes that that Huckabee's inner circle feels he could be the emerging leader who could re-establish the religious right, but his economic policies could also be too divisive.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at March 4, 2008 | Comments (14)

Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama invoked the Sermon on the Mount as a reason for why he supports civil unions during an appearance in Nelsonville, Ohio, on Sunday.

The response came after Pastor Leon Forte, who heads up Grace Christian Center in Athens, Ohio, asked about Obama's faith. The video is available here and the full transcript is available here.

"Your campaign sets a quandary for most evangelical Christians," Forte said. "They believe in the social agenda that you have. They have a problem with what the conservatives have laid out as the moral litmus test about who is worthy and who is not."

Obama responded by saying he is a devout Christian, he prays to Jesus every night and tries to go to church as much as he can.

"I think what you may be referring to, though, when you say controversies, probably has more to do with two issues, which is abortion and gay marriage, which has become, I think, how people measure faith in the evangelical community."

Obama said that while he does not believe in gay marriage, he does think the state should allow civil unions that allow a same-sex couples to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other.

"If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans," Obama said.

He called abortion a tragic and painful issue.

"But I think that ... in the end I think women, in consultation with their pastors, and their doctors, and their family, are in a better position to make these decisions than some bureaucrat in Washington."

Obama ended: "That's my view. Again, I respect people who may disagree, but I certainly don't think it makes me less Christian. Okay."

Obama also cited the Sermon on the Mount in his June 28, 2006, 'Call to Renewal' address.

"Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles."

Obama also spoke with CT about abortion in a January interview.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at March 3, 2008 | Comments (74)

"I'm not a math guy. I'm more of a miracle guy."

The words of Mike Huckabee a few minutes ago on "Saturday Night Live's" mock news show "Weekend Update." The former Arkansas governor was there to explain, in self-deprecating form, why he remains in the race for the Republican presidential nomination even though he'd still be trailing John McCain if he swept each and every remaining delegate.

"Mike Huckabee does not overstay his welcome," he said. "When it's time for me to go, I'll know. And I'll exit out with class and grace."

He then remained behind the anchors' desk, even after anchor Seth Meyers made it clear it was time to go.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 24, 2008 | Comments (14)

This is why I am so consistently wary of the role of religion in politics. JTA has a short story about Steve Cohen's opponent refusing to condemn this flier because she hadn't seen it, as if hearing those words weren't enough. It would be fair to say "Steve Cohen doesn't share the beliefs of black Christians" but what I don't understand is why the language has to be so inflammatory. Oh wait, that's right. This isn't about religion, at least in as much as it's not about racism. It's about politics.

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 14, 2008 | Comments (3)

Zogby International conducted a survey for Faith in Public Life on how evangelicals voted in Missouri and Tennessee, but the polling firm has been asking the evangelical/born-again question of Democrats since the January 19 Nevada caucuses. PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly scored the data, and it’s Hillary across the board on the Democratic side.

In every contest, Hillary Clinton bests Barack Obama among white evangelicals, and her support is significantly higher among evangelicals than among white Protestants in general. It was closest in California, where 40 percent of white evangelicals likely to vote in the Democratic primary said they’d vote for Clinton and 38 percent said they’d vote for Obama (among white Protestants, the numbers were 38 percent and 43 percent respectively). White evangelical Democrats went 43/24 for Clinton in Georgia, 59/24 in Missouri (FPL’s post-election survey put it at 54/37), and 59/27 in New Jersey.

But the Zogby data also has numbers for non-whites who identified as evangelical or born again (that’s a rare thing in these kinds of surveys), and while Obama is overwhelmingly winning this group (often by a 2-to-1 margin or better), Hillary is doing significantly better with this group than she is with non-white Protestants in general.

Unfortunately, the Zogby data at the Religion and Ethics Newsweekly site doesn’t give us the broad breakdowns, so we don’t know how many evangelicals said they were likely to vote in a Democratic primary or caucus compared to those who said they were likely to vote in a Republican one. We don’t know how many Democratic voters identified as evangelical, or how many of these were non-white.

But what we do know is that Hillary is doing better among evangelicals than she is among Protestants in general. And that’s a surprise, especially since most pundits have assumed that Obama, not Clinton, is the evangelical favorite on the Democratic side.

See, pollsters? Asking the evangelical question gets you surprising data that news organizations like to talk about!

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 11, 2008 | Comments (15)

Faith in Public Life has been complaining that exit polls have asked only Republicans whether they’re evangelical or born again. Last week, they decided to do something about it, and surveyed voters in Missouri and Tennessee to see how evangelicals were really voting.

In both states, one-third of voters who identified as evangelical or born again voted in the Democratic primaries.

"Comparatively, only one in four white evangelical voters in Missouri and Tennessee supported Senator John Kerry in the 2004 general election," the organization noted in its press release. In a press conference announcing its poll data, Faith in Public Life’s panelists similarly suggested that the number reflects something new.

"The presumed lock on evangelical voters by the Republican Party is breaking down," Robert P. Jones said.

Sojourners head Jim Wallis likewise proclaimed, "The media is operating with an outdated script. … Things are changing. Evangelicals are leaving the religious right in droves."

But many political scientists have noted that evangelical support for Bush, particularly in the 2004 election, was probably an anomaly. Evangelicals have for the past several decades largely split two-thirds for Republicans, one-third for Democrats. Bill Clinton did particularly well among evangelicals, especially in 1992, drawing between 35 percent and 40 percent of the evangelical vote. If the evangelical vote is shifting, it’s probably more accurate to say it’s shifting back to pre-Bush levels.

(The good stuff after the jump...)

When asked about this, Jones insisted that the numbers do not represent a return to form, and said that young evangelicals in particular are less likely to identify with the Republican Party. He pointed to a recent survey he co-authored from Third Way, which showed one-fifth of evangelicals are progressives (i.e. liberal), one-third are moderates, and one-half are conservatives.

Evangelicals made up a sizable block in the Democratic primaries surveyed: 19 percent in Missouri (where 55 percent of the Republican primary voters were evangelical) and 29 percent in Tennessee (where 73 percent of the Republican voters were evangelical).

In Tennessee, the evangelical percentage in the Democratic primary was the same as white men and all black voters, and nearly three times that of union members. In Missouri, the evangelical vote for Democrats was the same as the senior citizen vote and larger than the black vote and union-member vote. (I’m comparing the FPL numbers on evangelicals with exit poll data for the other groups, which is not quite apples and oranges but a bit like comparing Fujis and Granny Smiths.)

Hillary Clinton triumphed in both states among evangelical Democrats. That’s a bit of a surprise, especially since CT’s informal online polling showed Obama way ahead among our readers. But in both states surveyed, the numbers for white evangelicals look an awful lot like the white vote in general. In Tennessee, Obama actually did worse among white evangelicals (12%) than among all whites (20%; the exit poll data had Obama’s white support at 26%).

In Missouri, Obama’s support was the same among white evangelicals and all whites, but Clinton’s support was slightly lower among evangelicals than with all whites. Still, the 54 percent of the evangelical vote that Clinton won in that state is considerably more than the support she got from all Democratic voters. Obama won the state by about 10,000 votes of more than 820,000 cast, but he and Clinton received the same number of convention delegates.

Zogby International conducted the survey, which has a margin of error of +/- 5 percentage points. Faith in Public Life and the Center for American Progress Action Fund paid for the survey.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 11, 2008 | Comments (1)

Here's the text of James Dobson's endorsement of Mike Huckabee as sent out last night to the e-mail subscribers of CitizenLink:

Dr. James Dobson issues the following statement tonight, speaking as a private citizen.

I am endorsing Gov. Mike Huckabee for President of the United States today. My decision comes in the wake of my statement on Super Tuesday that I could not vote for Sen. John McCain, even if he goes on to win the Republican nomination. His record on the institution of the family and other conservative issues makes his candidacy a matter of conscience and concern for me.

That left two pro-family candidates whom I could support, but I was reluctant to choose between them. However, the decision by Gov. Mitt Romney to put his campaign "on hold" changes the political landscape. The remaining candidate for whom I could vote is Gov. Huckabee. His unwavering positions on the social issues, notably the institution of marriage, the importance of faith and the sanctity of human life, resonate deeply with me and with many others. That is why I will support Gov. Huckabee through the remaining primaries, and will vote for him in the general election if he should get the nomination. Obviously, the governor faces an uphill struggle, given the delegates already committed to Sen. McCain. Nevertheless, I believe he is our best remaining choice for President of the United States.

(NOTE: Dr. Dobson made these statements as a private citizen. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a reflection of the opinions of Focus on the Family or Focus on the Family Action.)

Posted by David Neff at February 8, 2008 | Comments (29)

Eric Gorski of the Associated Press scores the scoop.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 7, 2008 | Comments (0)

Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican nomination today.

He said that if he continued, it would "forestall the launch of a national campaign, making it easier for Sen. Clinton or Obama to win."

"If this were only about me, I'd go on. But it's never been only about me. I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, in this time of war I feel I have to now stand aside for our party and for our country. This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose."

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic describes how the crowd did not know it was coming and began to boo after they figured it out.

"Now, I disagree with John McCain on many issues," he said, drawing a chorus of anticipatory boos -- they thought Romney was going to start to attack McCain. "But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq."

See the full transcript for Romney's comments on religion in his speech.

"Americans love God, and those who don't have faith, typically believe in something greater than themselves - a "Purpose Driven Life."

The former Massachusetts governor, former investment banker, and leader of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was criticized for his flop flopping on issues like abortion. A Pew Forum survey found that 36 percent of evangelicals were reluctant to vote for a Mormon.

See previous post for more coverage.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 7, 2008 | Comments (3)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will suspend his bid, CNN just reported.

Romney is expected to announce his decision Thursday afternoon at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, three Republican sources told CNN.

The news comes just after the former Massachusetts governor vowed to stay in the race.

Romney, who drew much attention for his Mormon beliefs, split evangelicals votes at 31 percent with Mike Huckabee (34 percent) and John McCain (29 percent). See CT's illustration of how the states broke down.

Previously, pundits were wondering where Huckabee's votes would go if he were to drop out. Now the question flips. Where will Romney's votes go?

Romney's decision comes after Focus on the Family's James Dobson said that while he would not vote for McCain, he would vote for Romney or Huckabee.

"My theology is very, very different, obviously, and I would not find myself in agreement with the ways he sees Scripture, and, of course, their own interpretation and extension of Scripture. I'm not in any way minimizing that; it's a very important issue.

"I think we're facing such a point of crisis in our country, that we're going to have to have the strongest leadership we can. And I think I could deal with that in the polling booth."

Previous CT coverage on Romney includes an interview with the candidate:

Latter-Day Politics | Mitt Romney believes American values, not Mormon doctrine, should rule a President.

Mitt's Mormonism and the 'Evangelical Vote' | Can conservative Protestants vote for a member of what they consider a cult?

Romney Dodges Doctrine | But questions about candidate's Mormon beliefs may continue.

What Evangelicals Heard in Romney's 'Faith in America' Speech | What the candidate said will largely be welcomed. But questions remain about what wasn't.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 7, 2008 | Comments (0)

Jim Wallis is still preaching that God is not a Republican or a Democrat.

The Sojourners president appeared on the Jon Stewart show January 22, and his book will be announced at #10 on The New York Times best seller list later this week. He spoke with Christianity Today about the election and his take on the candidates and the evangelical agenda.

[Barack Obama is] almost a public theologian. He really understands the relationship between religion and public life, faith and politics. [Hillary Clinton] was a Methodist youth group kid who got urban experiences in Chicago and she has had her faith formed by that. McCain struggles more to understand the evangelical world. He’s trying, but it’s not as natural to him. Barack and Hillary were having faith forums in Iowa and Massachusetts and gospel tours in South Carolina. McCain is also trying now to reach out to evangelicals.

Can you evaluate how the candidates will appeal to evangelicals on specific issues?

Probably Barack and Hillary making poverty more an issue than McCain appeals to evangelicals. McCain and Barack and Hillary care about the environment and climate change and McCain has bucked his own party on that own question. That’s something people notice and pay attention to. The way that Barack and Hillary are critical of the war in Iraq and U.S. foreign policy does appeal to a new generation of evangelicals. I think people are critical of the conviction John McCain’s view of the war in Iraq. I admire the way that he again stood up against his own party and his own president by taking a stance against torture.

George Bush took the majority of evangelicals' votes in 2008. How will the votes play out in this election?

You have to remember that George Bush has turned evangelicals away from the Republican Party. His presidency has been such a disaster, such a failure, it’s embarrassed a lot of Christians. Evangelicals now are going to listen to someone who ... is responsive to the issues that they most care about. That will include 30,000 children who died today because of completely and unnecessary poverty, and utterly preventable disease. A new generation really believes that Jesus probably cares about those children than gay marriage amendments in Ohio. Sometimes I almost have an image of some old men standing in the river and the water is flowing past them and their hands are up in the air and they’re saying ‘Stop, stop, there are only two moral values issues,’ and the water is rushing by them, a new generation is rushing right by them.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 6, 2008 | Comments (22)

Religious voters split between Democratic candidates, says John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Sen. Obama has clearly done very well among black Protestants, and that’s changed the equation. If you go back to the polls last year that showed Sen. Clinton way ahead, one of the reason was she was winning the black vote by a large margin and that doesn’t seem to be happening. White Catholics are really important to the extent that Clinton can hang on to them. One of the tasks for the Obama campaign is to find a way to reach into Catholic community. There’s quite a struggle over white Protestants. It appears that Clinton has an edge there as well, so a challenge for Sen. Obama. I see a pretty fierce struggle going forward and religious groups will be part of the mix.

Republican Mike Huckabee continues to surprise the experts.

It’s really interesting how well Governor Huckabee has done across the South. He did it very largely with the support of evangelicals where did really quite well. A lot of people thought McCain would win those states because Huckabee and Romney would kind of divide up the evangelical vote. It kind of worked the other way and then Huckabee came out winning because McCain and Romney competed. I don’t see a lot of evidence of the broadening of [Huckabee's] base of support. He just did better among evangelicals in the South, and of course evangelicals are numerous among the South. The challenge of Governor Huckabee to expand his appeal is still very much with him.

Mitt Romney has been the more conservative candidate for the Republican party, but he did not do as well among evangelicals.

The evangelical community does seem to be divided. The fact that Governor Huckabee and McCain have done well among evangelicals suggests the evangelical community is open to a broader agenda than they have been in the past. What’s most noticeable about them is they have more moderate economic policies. One conclusion that one could draw is a lot evangelicals are ready to move beyond President Bush. They’re ready to move on to a more moderate economic policy and a different foreign policy.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 6, 2008 | Comments (0)

Exit polls show a split on abortion between Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Wheaton College political science professor Amy Black says there seems to be a distinction between perception and reality.

Pro-life Republicans are voting for Huckabee and pro-choice Republicans are voting for McCain. On one hand, that may make sense, but when you realize that McCain has a very consistent pro-life voting record and has been supported in all his elections by the National Right to Life Committee, it begins to look a little bit stranger. But when you talk to people, the perception is that Huckabee is much stronger on the issue.

And as a scholar, she, too, is frustrated that Democratic exit polls failed to ask the same evangelical self-identification questions as the Republican exit polls.

One of the problems is, we frankly don’t know what’s going on. We do know what’s going on with evangelical Republicans; we don’t know what’s going on with evangelical Democrats. One of the disappointing things is that we can’t gauge it on both sides, even though we know that there would be important evangelical voters on both sides.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 6, 2008 | Comments (1)

Political science professor Allen Hertzke says it is best not to make predictions. Huckabee's surprising wins make the Republican waters murkier, says the director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.

I think the big story religiously is Huckabee’s surge. I think it was unexpected by most of the experts and pundits. He had a shoestring budget, he barely was funded, yet he won five states basically on a tremendous turnout of evangelical Christians. It’s really muddied up the Republican race pretty significantly. What looked like a might be a triumphant McCain victory is turning out to be something a little bit more drawn out I think.

Hertzke says the attitude among voters is quite different for the two parties.

It’s a very unsettled race. A lot of Republicans are not really satisfied with the field of candidates. They’re struggling to make their decisions. The other side is a little different because I think here’s a lot of energy and excitement in the Democratic Party and the supporters of Hillary and Obama are both enthusiastic about their candidates. I sense on the Republican side, I sense more of a groping for ‘who am I going to vote for?’

The political scientist believes that while Obama may have some interest from evangelicals, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain both have work to do.

I think Barack Obama already has a message of hope, a religiously-based message, a subtle one, but I think it’s there. I think his message about unity, ending the divisiveness of politics is very appealing, especially to young evangelicals. Hillary Clinton has to work harder, clearly, to cut into the evangelical vote in a general election. [McCain has] been trying to reach out to the conservative wing of the party, not only the religiously conservative but the economically conservative of the wing. I think it’s still dicey for him.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 6, 2008 | Comments (0)

So we don't know for whom evangelicals / born again Christians are voting on the Democratic side. At least we know whether gay Californians were swayed by the Kennedy endorsements.

Priorities. And established media narratives.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 6, 2008 | Comments (0)

For all of tonight's posts (and the rest of February's), go here. We've posted more items tonight than fit on our main liveblog page.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Mike Cromartie, vice president at the Ethics and Public Policy Center said James Dobson's decision to not vote for Sen. John McCain was premature:

Politics is about making choices between relative goods and lesser evils and not about having perfect choices. It’s a wasted vote on Dr. Dobson’s part. It’s irresponsible on his part to give that kind of leadership. He should sit down with McCain and see if he can be persuasive. What he should be saying is, "I’ll wait to see what the candidates have to offer." It’s premature to emphatically say, "I’ll never vote for anybody."

Late Tuesday night, results looked bright for McCain:

It looks like McCain is going to be a candidate. The things to ask are how many meetings is it going to take and what kind of actions are going to be needed for social conservatives to rally behind McCain against an either Clinton or Obama ticket. This is unusual for the Republican Party to have a candidate that’s so not particularly admired by social conservatives. The story really is going to be how McCain is going to win the base.

Cromartie compared McCain with the first President Bush:

George H.W. Bush did not have all that great of a relationship with social conservatives. The reason that he picked Dan Quayle was Dan Quayle was seen as someone they can trust. It didn’t help the ticket that much but it did help satisfy social conservatives. I guess if I was going to predict, it would be a McCain-Huckabee ticket just for that reason.

Cromartie told me what he thinks candidates will need to do to galvanize evangelical support.

If the evangelical agenda is broadening, as it broadens, it doesn’t mean it’s eliminating convictions it previously held. You can broaden the agenda to be concerned about poverty and AIDS in Africa and the state of the environment, but it doesn’t mean you cancel out your concerns about the life issues, about ethical issues, or the marriage issues. It takes more than scintillating rhetoric to convince voters to vote for you. It means certain promises about policies that you will pursue.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 5, 2008 | Comments (14)

Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported that evangelicals' influence heading into Super Tuesday would be greatly weakened. Without a compelling conservative candidate, and with younger evangelicals' political concerns expanding beyond core issues of the Religious Right, the Post predicted that the evangelical vote would be split. By and large, that prediction seems to be true.

The danger of being captive to either party has been noted by many evangelical leaders, including Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter. As he said to CT's Liveblog earlier this evening, "People just can’t be pinned down to their proper categories anymore. That’s probably the story that will come out of this election."

But if evangelicals can't be counted on to vote together, are they worth targeting at all? If conservative, white, male evangelicals vote just like other conservative white males, does it matter that they're evangelicals? If urban, progressive evangelicals vote just like other urban liberals, does their religious affiliation need to be considered?

Depending on how you look at it, the story of Election 2008 may be the maturing of the evangelical vote -- or the increasing irrelevance of it.

Posted by Madison Trammel at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

My attempts to format this in a friendlier format have failed. Click the image for an even bigger version.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Even with all of the talk of the evangelical agenda broadening, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty, believes that the majority of evangelicals will be particularly passionate about one issue next fall.

As long as there is a bright line distinction between the two parties on the life issues, it’s going to suck up all the oxygen in the room when it comes to voting. If evangelicals are forced to choose between a climate policy they like and a pro-life policy they like, they’re going to vote for unborn children. If the price of having the climate policy they like is to vote a candidate to vote for a woman to kill her own baby, it’s too high of a price.

I asked Land what it would take to get evangelical support.

They’ll have to talk about the issues that matter to evangelicals and make it clear that they’re going to be defenders of the unborn, make it clear that they’re going to nominate only strict constructionists, original intent jurists to the Supreme Court, make it clear they’re going to pro-family policies both economically and socially, and for a good portion of evangelicals that they’re support a strong national defense, and they’re going to make it a high priority to keep the country safe from foreign attack.

Even though clear candidates have not emerged from the race, Land is glad that one candidate is out for sure.

The most troublesome prospect that faced them is now gone because they refused to listen to the talking heads and the experts who told them six months ago that they would have to hold their nose and vote for Giuliani. That terrible, wrenching choice of having to vote for the lesser of two evils or to not vote for a pro-choice candidate is now off the table.

If McCain is the nominee, Land believes evangelicals will eventually rally behind him.

The vast majority are going to vote for McCain because he is pro-life and he is pro national defense and pro protection of America. Even if he’s not their first or second choice in the primaries, the vast majority of them will vote for them. In the last presidential election, 78 percent of evangelicals voted for Bush and 22 percent voted for Kerry. I don’t think it’s going to change much if it’s McCain versus Clinton.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 5, 2008 | Comments (4)

One can surely debate the value of identity politics. But in some sense it's natural that a South filled with evangelicals voted for one of their own in Mike Huckabee. Still, some see more nefarious trends at work. John O'Sullivan over at National Review's Corner suggested that these evangelicals just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Mormon. "My southern belle wife always warned that many evangelicals would vote for anyone but a Mormon," O'Sullivan wrote. "I was skeptical - and we don't yet have the exit poll breakdowns on that kind of question - but it looks as if something like that may be at work."

Will we have any data on this topic? I wonder how that question would have to be worded. In the meantime, is it really plausible to suggest that evangelical Republicans would go out of their way to vote against a candidate who's not even the frontrunner? Especially if they have policy and affinity reasons to vote for Huckabee?

Posted by Collin Hansen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Mark Silk observes:

Huckabee doesn't do as well among Oklahoma evangelicals as he's done in other big evangelical states--just 36 percent compared to 31 percent for McCain and 26 percent for Romney. Oklahoma's just across the border from Arkansas. Are Okies too familiar with Huck?

The numbers I'm looking at are 39/29/25, so slightly better news for Huckabee. But his point stands. In states where 60% or more of Republicans call themselves evangelical, Huckabee has been in the 40s at least.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

As Huckabee said, the pundits were calling the Republican contest a two-man race before Super Tuesday. "Well, you know what, it is," he said, "and we're in it."

What did his speech stress? A fair shot at the American dream for middle-class families. Families allowed to raise children the way they wish. Border security. Sanctity of human life. In other words, his usual combination of social conservatism and economic populism.

So much for Romney. He has been criticizing McCain for his weakness on issue social conservatives care about. Those criticisms may have hit home, but they've helped Huckabee rather than him.

(Collin had a bit more on Huckabee's speech.)

Posted by Madison Trammel at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

James Dobson said earlier that he may abstain from the election if the candidates fail to live up to his standards.

In 2006, Dobson and other Christian leaders said it would be a sin to not vote, as long as the candidates provide the right resume.

"If you can find a politician who understands the institution of the family, who wants to protect children from immorality, who understands that we are at war with those who want to destroy us and who understand that liberal judges are undermining us and need to be reined in," he said "and if you can find a politician who lives by a strong moral code and believes in Jesus Christ ... if you can find such a person, it would be a sin not to vote for him."

More commentary on Dobson's earlier statement comes from CBN reporter and former Focus on the Family radio reporter David Brody who asks "Why come out with this statement now?"

The skeptic in me wonders if this is a way of helping Romney without endorsing him. Let's be real. For Evangelical Dobson to endorse a Mormon would be a tough pill to swallow for many of his loyal listeners so maybe this is code for "Vote for Romney."

I guess James Dobson won't be getting any calls from a possible McCain administration if that ever happens. Not that James Dobson really cares about that. I'm sure millions of Evangelicals feel the same way that Dr. Dobson feels, but let's be clear: not all Evangelicals will jump ship on McCain. He does appeal to many on the national security issue and that trumps many of the other blemishes.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

If any exit poll anywhere asked Democrats if they identify themselves as evangelical/born-again, I'm not seeing it. I'm sure Howard Dean, Leah Daughtry, Jim Wallis, Katie Barge, and others aren't happy. But journalists (who call the shots on what questions get asked) shouldn't be pleased, either. There's a lot of talk tonight about how evangelicals are shaping the Republican ticket. There ought to have been some discussion about how they're shaping the Democratic ticket, too. After all, a third of evangelicals vote Democratic.

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (2)

Former Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee took the stage first this evening declaring Republican rival Mitt Romney dead.

He alluded to the David-Goliath story and took one shot (seemingly) at Vietnam veteran John McCain: "one small, smooth stone is even more effective that a whole lot of armor."

Then he used the words of Jesus to dig on the mega-rich Romney: "the widow's mite has more effectiveness than all the gold in the world."

Posted by Collin Hansen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (2)

Northland pastor Joel Hunter believes that early results from the primaries show a redefinition of the evangelical movement. He spoke with Christianity Today from his home in Florida.

I think evangelicals care very much that while government is not the answer, it’s not the enemy anymore, and that we find a way to protect the vulnerable outside the womb as well as inside the womb. The problems are so big that they can’t be addressed by one party or one ideology, or just by part of the electorate. You really need to galvanize people that have different opinions and offer solutions that people can buy into at least partially. That’s the kind of candidate people are looking for.

I asked him how evangelicals would view John McCain as a candidate if he were to win the Republican primary.

He knows very well what audiences he needs to go to and what issues he needs to speak to, but it’s not going to be like George Bush in 2004. He’s not going to talk about a conversion experience. He can do a lot without talking explicitly about Christ per se to signal that he is open to cooperating with various faith communities. What we can look for from John McCain are some of the more compassionate stances on some of the issues towards those who are disadvantaged.

And finally,

People just can’t be pinned down to their proper categories anymore. That’s probably the story that will come out of this election.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Clinton's campaign is calling her Massachusetts win "one of the biggest surprises of the night." It is that, especially since she lost the endorsement of the state's most famous political family. The Kennedys are probably the state's most famous Catholic family, too, and she handily won Roman Catholic voters in that state, while Obama took the Protestant and "no religion" vote.

I'm a little surprised that the "no religion" vote (19%) among Massachusetts Democrats is bigger than the Protestant vote (15%).

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Polls in more than half of the 24 states holding primaries or caucuses today are still open, but Barack Obama has already surprised the Clinton campaign with a dominant win in Georgia (that's based on returns from about 10 percent of the precincts.)

It's almost inconceivable that Hillary Clinton could struggle in her home state of New York, but her campaign suggested today that they're no longer certain about a big win in California.

"We're confident we're going to win a diverse mix of states today, but the results are going to be close and inconclusive due to the proportional allocation of delegates under the Democratic Party rules," said Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications advisor. "We do expect to maintain the overall lead in delegates tomorrow when we wake up that we do today.''

Clinton's strategists said they could see the fight going through March and possibly onto the convention floor in Denver in August -- great sport for political junkies but a test of nerves for the candidates. And even if Obama gets more delegates today, Clinton's advisors said her lead among "super delegates'' -- party leaders and elected officials who are free to vote as they choose -- would still give her the overall lead. But that would just add to the perception that she's the mainstream choice, and fuel Obama's contention that he's the candidate of change.

So how did Clinton lose her dominant position in California, a state she once led by 16 poll points?

Wolfson: "Sen Obama has put considerable resources into the state. He's had large rallies, he's had great surrogates coming out to urge his supporters to vote.... Much to their credit the state is close. I don't think we're going to know who has won California until very late into the night. That's just the way politics is. The election wasn't 30 days ago. It's today. And as of today it's very close.''

How much of this has to do with the fact that Obama has been winning the war of religious rhetoric is unclear. Christian Democrats split their votes in Georgia between the two. By tomorrow we should have a better understanding.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

MSNBC just ran down the evangelical vote in the Republican contest today. A third of Republican voters surveyed today said they were evangelical. Two-thirds said no.

Of these, 33 percent voted for Huckabee, 31 percent for Romney, 30 percent for McCain, and 4 percent for Ron Paul.

When asked why they voted for their candidate, 53 percent said it was because their candidate "shares my values," 21 percent cited experience, 18 percent said the candidate "says what he believes," and 8 percent said "he has the vest chance to win in November." (The breakdown here wasn't all that different from above. For example, of evangelicals who said they voted for their candidate because he "shares my values," 33 percent were Huckabee voters.)

Here's what the evangelical breakdown looks like so far. (Click for a larger version.)

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

The most recent Barna survey reveals some crucial insights for understanding the born-again/evangelical electorate. Among born-again Christians, a large swath of the American population, Barna found that 40 percent would support the Democratic candidate in November, with only 29 percent backing the Republican. Another 28 percent are undecided. Clearly these numbers indicate a dramatic departure from the 2000 and 2004 victories for President Bush. It appears many of these evangelicals vote candidate-first, not the party platform, and the President has left a bad taste in their mouth regarding fellow Republicans.

Barna defines evangelicals as a subset of born-again Christians. They hold more strictly to historic evangelical doctrines. They may also hew more closely to platform issues. Evangelical support for the Republican candidate has dropped off (now 45 percent), but they have not yet swung to the Democrat (11 percent).

These trends will be fascinating to watch. Born-again Christians may flock to a candidate such as Obama who speaks openly and eloquently about his faith. And evangelicals may shrink from a candidate such as McCain who isn't so strong on conservative social issues. Keep an eye on these trends, even as the primary tonight sorts things out.

Posted by Collin Hansen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

Even in Georgia, the pollsters aren't asking Democrats if they're evangelical or born again (64% of Republican voters today said yes). But that doesn't mean there aren't some interesting religion numbers in the exit polls.

What's up with 40 percent of Georgia's Democrats identifying themselves as "Other Christian," compared to only 28 percent Protestant? (The state's 8 percent Catholic is consistent with the state's population.)

The Republicans have fewer "Other Christians," which makes me think it's largely a synonym for "black Protestants." (Note: They also have fewer Jews, "something elses," and "nones." And no Muslims. I've dropped these from the table below, but you can access the original here.)

Here are the evangelical numbers from Georgia:

Update: Our guest blogger Mollie Hemingway jokes: "Maybe Georgia has a huge Eastern Orthodox population." Hey, it is Georgia!

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

Chairman of Focus on the Family James Dobson said once again Tuesday that he would not vote for Republican candidate John McCain.

Dobson's frustrations with McCain revolve around the following issues: voting against a marriage amendment, supporting embryonic stem-cell research, opposing tax cuts, "little regard" for freedom of speech, preserving filibusters in judicial hearings, and foul language.

Former Bush White House official David Kuo analyzes Dobson's statement on Beliefnet.

By putting himself out there so forcefully, Dr. Dobson risks playing the role of Dr. Kevorkian in ushering in the end of the old-line religious right.

Over at The Atlantic, Ross Douthat says that the statement pretty much assumes a McCain victory, and sounds more wistful than defiant.

Finally, attacking McCain for his tendency to use "foul and obscene language" seems like the purest form of social conservative self-parody. Particularly given the Bush Administration's record on that front.

The Baltimore Sun's James Oliphant:

Today may not be the apocalypse for many on the Religious Right, but to paraphrase Tommy Lee Jones in "No Country For Old Men," it will do until the apocalypse gets here.

Beliefnet's Rod Dreher:

You know, I have my own doubts about whether or not I'll vote this fall in the presidential contest, given how strongly I oppose McCain on the war and on immigration, issues that aren't deal-breakers for Dobson. So I can't really fault Dobson that much, though there is a certain nanny-nanny-boo-boo quality to this statement. ... Speaking as an unapologetic theocon, we need a better quality of theocon leadership in this country. I'm just sayin'.

TIME magazine's recent piece on Dobson examines whether he actually maintains the same kind of political clout he has had in the past.

As Focus on the Family weighs in on the presidential race, however, an examination of the group's records shows that its influence may not be all that it once was, and that its actual base may have become smaller.

Beliefnet's Dan Gilgoff believes his clout is still there.

Let God-o-Meter be the first to say that evangelicals are clearly less beholden to Christian Right leaders like Dobson than in the past. ... But come November, if Dobson's machine declines to swing into action for the Arizona senator, it could be the single biggest reason behind McCain's loss.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 5, 2008 | Comments (8)

I'm camped out in front of the television with a case of Diet Pepsi and a Costco-sized bag of trail mix. With only 1% of the precincts reporting, Fox is calling Georgia for Obama, of course. While we wait for more results, you might read this announcement from the Barna Group:

If the election were held today, most born again voters would select the Democratic Party nominee for president, whoever that might be.

Barna's survey has two other angles that might be interesting for readers here.

More than one quarter of respondents contend that Mormons aren't Christian (57% of Evangelical Christians said the same).

Barna also evaluated voters who describe themselves as "deeply spiritual" and "concerned about the moral condition of the United States." That segment represents 35% of the electorate:

This group proved to be somewhat more conservative in its political views (42% are "mostly conservative") and slightly more inclined than the national population to be registered as Republican (35% Republican, 44% Democrat). However, these "values voters" are only slightly more inclined to select a Republican candidate (27%) than is true nationally (24%). In fact, the "values voters" are currently less inclined to select the Republican nominee than are born again (29%) or evangelical voters (45%).

It will be interesting to see how values voters voted today . . .

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

Apparently the exit polls so far show something of a Mike Huckabee revival in the Republican primary. The former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher has already won West Virginia's caucus. Presumably he's won his home state. Alabama and Georgia are friendly terrain with large evangelical blocs. At the very least, Huckabee's strong Southern showing could delay the McCain coronation or make his case for the vice-presidential nomination. Would a Huckabee running mate make McCain more palatable to folks like James Dobson?

Posted by Collin Hansen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

Mitt Romney is attacking John McCain's campaign after Mike Huckabee's winner-take-all caucus win this afternoon.

Romney did well in the first round of balloting, with 41 percent of the vote. Huckabee had 33 percent, McCain had 16 percent, and Ron Paul had 10 percent. But reports say that McCain's campaign, seeking to torpedo a Romney win, asked the Arizona senator's supporters to back Huckabee. Romney's camp.

So West Virginia is probably the state where Huckabee has done his best among non-evangelical voters. But apparently there's no polling data of the caucus voters, so we won't know if that's the case.

(How evangelical is West Virginia? If you count members of evangelical denominations, not very. But rest assured that the country's largest religious block, "unclaimed," includes a ton of independent churches. Only 13 percent say they have "no religious affiliation." Some reports say about 44 percent of the West Virginia's population identifies as evangelical.)

Posted by Ted Olsen at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

Will the exit pollsters ask Democrats about their faith? Is "the evangelical vote" shifting? Will Tuesday night's winners thank God for their victories? What will the country's leading religion-and-politics pundits think about the results? Join Christianity Today's editors and several special guests Tuesday night at the CT Liveblog for the stories you won't see on the networks.

Posted by Susan Wunderink at February 5, 2008 | Comments (1)

Candidates want the Latino vote, and Samuel Rodriguez is just a phone call away.

Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference, has been a go-to guy for politicians looking for a Hispanic evangelical voice. He has also been the center of attention recently as journalists want to know more about evangelical voting patterns.

McClatchy Newspapers reported that Republican candidates Sen. John McCain and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee have sought Rodriguez's support, and an aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney put in a call.

Today, NPR aired an interview with the California pastor and Newsweek profiled Rodriguez in late December. The Chicago Tribune also recently profiled the California pastor, saying that Christian leaders call him the "Karl Rove of Latino evangelical strategy."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at February 5, 2008 | Comments (0)

He might be a favorite of many evangelicals, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has said some things that scare other Americans. The problem is not that he's talking freely about his faith -- that's something all the candidates now find necessary -- but that he seems to genuinely believe what he says. Here's how that is playing out with one important community of voters.

Zero percent -- that's a bagel -- of New York Jews favored Huckabee over the other Republican front-runners in a mid-January poll by Siena College. And a completely unscientific search here in Los Angeles didn't yield better results. (Huckabee's press office did not respond to a request for info on any Jewish volunteers in California; Greenfield also was unaware of any supporters.)

Jacques Berlinerblau, the author of "Thumpin' It," explained that phenomenon to me this way:

"Jews have been conditioned to play it close to the vest and keep their religious sentiments to themselves," said Berlinerblau, an associate professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University. "It is so viscerally in our cultural DNA, I don't think we are very comfortable with public faith-and-values talk. Especially when it is coming from a Christian spokesperson."

I know what you are thinking: Jews aren't typically considered swing voters. True, but if the Republican nominee is John McCain, we will most certainly see more Jews vote Republican than if the nominee is Huckabee or Mitt Romney or (he's still in it) Ron Paul. The same can be said for those who consider themselves an amalgam of liberal and conservative political opinions.

This article also appears at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at February 1, 2008 | Comments (23)

While Florida seems to indicate a major shift in the Republican presidential race, among voters who identified themselves as evangelical or born again, last night's results look somewhat familiar, with Romney, Huckabee, and McCain all bunched up again.

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 30, 2008 | Comments (9)

In the vast canon of analysis of evangelical voters, John Green's interview with Pew Forum is speculative but helpful. There are the things we already know (e.g. Giuliani has an "issues problem" for evangelicals), but also some thinking past Super Tuesday - and before George W.

Green sees three real contenders for the majority of the evangelical vote: Huckabee, Romney, and McCain.

But are any Democrats likely to snag many evangelicals? Obama's comfort with speaking about his faith seems to give some evangelicals the warm fuzzies, Green says, and Democrats may get a greater proportion of young evangelicals this election.

"A lot of the anecdotal evidence from the campaign trail suggests that these are folks that may like to see a different relationship between evangelicals and the Republican Party," Green said, explaining that McCain's rocky relationship with Religious Right leaders Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell might not blight his campaign.

To truly get a majority of evangelicals, Green says, a candidate needs three characteristics: personal appeal, electability, and issue positions that are "minimally comfortable." Presumably, it's Democratic issue positions that continue to push evangelicals to the Republican candidates.

Asked about how Huckabee's evangelical support would be dispersed if he withdrew, Green responds:

The fact that Huckabee has come this far with relatively little organization and a real lack of funds is because of the enthusiasm of some evangelicals at the grassroots level who have been campaigning for him on their own initiative. That kind of enthusiasm is difficult to shift from one candidate to another.

It's at least plausible that if Huckabee's followers stay involved in the process, they may find John McCain more congenial than some of the other GOP candidates.

Does this mean that most evangelicals will vote Republican next November? Or will they remain divided and unpredictable in a field where every candidate seems to have two but not three of the characteristics they're looking for?

Posted by Susan Wunderink at January 29, 2008 | Comments (13)

Time will tell whether Democratic efforts will actually impact evangelical voter habits, but one Pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist seems a bit skeptical.

David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer believes that at least those in Colorado will stick to the Republicans. Horsey attended New Life Church, formerly led by Ted Haggard. After a lengthy description of a megachurch worship service, he describes his talk with New Life's associate pastor Rob Brendle.

The pastor thinks the country needs "a morally principled diplomat in the White House" like Mitt Romney, not a religious leader like Mike Huckabee. Nothing would be worse for Christian conservatives than a candidate who scared the rest of America with too much focus on his faith, he said.

The cartoonist then wanted to know, "What about the Democrats?" since the Democrats have been making an emphasis on religion in their campaigns. Horsey writes that the pastor laughed and said he'd seen it before. He was in a meeting with John Kerry in 2004 where the former candidate pulled a New Testament. The pastor said nobody bought it then, and it won't work this year, either.

"If Hillary has suddenly started reading the Scriptures, then I'm glad she's reading the Scriptures," Brendle said, but evangelicals are sticking with the Republicans.

However, Clinton has long been in the Methodist tradition, and as President Bush's former speech writer Michael Gerson wrote back in the fall, she is neither secular nor awkward about her faith. Either way, I don't think anybody believes evangelicals will be overwhelmingly wooed to vote for a Democrat, but many are pleased that the Democrats are using the words faith and politics in the same sentence.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at January 23, 2008 | Comments (9)

Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson dropped out of the presidential race Tuesday, the New York Times writes.

Mr. Thompson, 65, rode in to the campaign powered by the high hopes of conservative Republicans who were disappointed with the field of candidates and hoped that Mr. Thompson - a television actor and former counsel to the Watergate committee - could rally conservatives behind him. But Mr. Thompson instead brought a phlegmatic style to the campaign trail, and his candidacy never took off.

Even though Thompson appealed to some social conservatives and received an endorsement from the National Right to Life, he never drew significant numbers. He entered the race late in the game, told voters he didn't attend church and said he would not talk about religion on the campaign.

He placed third in South Carolina, apparently taking votes away from Mike Huckabee. Unless Huckabee decides to campaign more heavily in Florida, Thompson's exit from the race will likely help Mitt Romney in Florida.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at January 22, 2008 | Comments (2)

Most of the media coverage of evangelical voter behavior revolves around the Republican race, but it looks like Sen. Barack Obama is still interested in grabbing the "evangelical vote." During last night's CNN debate, he spoke about how the Democrats should go after evangelicals.

"I think there have been times -- there have been times where our Democratic Party did not reach out as aggressively as we could to evangelicals, for example, because the assumption was, well, they don't agree with us on choice, or they don't agree with us on gay rights, and so we just shouldn't show up.

And when you don't show up, if you're not going to church, then you're not talking to church folk. And that means that people have a very right-wing perspective in terms of what faith means and of defining our faith.

And as somebody who believes deeply in the precepts of Jesus Christ, particularly treating the least of these in a way that he would, that it is important for us to not concede that ground. Because I think we can go after those folks and get them."

This comment comes shortly after his campaign sent a mailer through South Carolina to debunk e-mail rumors that he is a Muslim. The mailer shows Obama with his head bowed in prayer and says that he will be guided by prayer when he's in office.

It's hard to tell if these attempts and previous ones are reaching evangelicals. As previously noted, the pollsters haven't asked Democrats the same self-identification questions as the Republicans.

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at January 22, 2008 | Comments (23)

What is a "cosmopolitan evangelical," and how does he or she differ from an everyday evangelical, if there is such a thing? Several sociologists have commented on a perceived shift in American evangelicalism's image, goals, and rhetoric, most notably Michael D. Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. He thinks that if you want to see what this new breed of evangelical looks like, you only have to look as far as Mike Huckabee, who indisputably had the vote of conservative Christians to thank for his Iowa victory two weeks ago.

Huckabee, though quite comfortable with speaking publicly about his personal relationship with Christ, his conservative views on religious hot-button issues like gay marriage and abortion, and even God's providential role in his Iowa win, nonetheless differs from many conservative evangelicals before him, especially those in the Religious Right.

"I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody," Huckabee often says, and when once asked whether the Christian life was the best way of life, he answered, "Well it is for me..." but that he didn't want to come off as "judgmental, caustic or pushy." As David Brooks of The New York Times recently noted, "Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He's funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he's not at war with modern culture." In other words, you won't hear Huckabee talking about his push to "take back America" anytime soon.

As last Saturday's South Carolina primary ended with Huckabee in second place behind John McCain by only a 3-percent margin, and Super Tuesday comes in two weeks, some pundits say Huckabee's success will rely largely on his ability to appeal to members of both the old and new guards of American evangelicalism, all the while appealing to non-evangelical American voters as well. As Lindsay writes on the blog The Imminent Frame,

Mike Huckabee must straddle the divide between the populists [old-guard evangelicals] and the cosmopolitans, convincing both that he is one of them. It's a difficult balancing act, but Huckabee is singularly poised to unite both camps. Like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, he is able to exist on the margins of different groups and yet seem like an insider. To win, a candidate must appear as comfortable before factory workers as he is before titans of industry. Huckabee's cosmopolitan faith helps him become all things to all people.

Jay Tolson, writing for U.S. News and World Report, echoes Lindsay's observation on the "Faith Matters" blog:

Whether Huckabee will learn to connect with a larger part of the electorate - or even see the need to do so - should become apparent in the coming primaries, particularly in Florida, a state with a strong core of evangelical voters but also a very diverse collection of other voters broadly representative of the American mix. . . . And how he comes through that trial may tell us as much about the new evangelicals as it does about Mike Huckabee.

Fortunately, the new evangelicals don't have to rely solely on a presidential win by Mike Huckabee to determine the strength of their voice in today's political arena.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at January 21, 2008 | Comments (11)

Complaints continue over exit polls asking only Republicans whether they are evangelical/born again. The question was omitted again last night in Michigan's Democratic primary. The exit polls, in fact, didn't ask Democrats any religion questions. But it hardly matters: The national Democratic Party says Michigan's votes won't count at the convention because the state moved its primary too early. Obama and Edwards weren't even on the ballot. That's not to say the Democratic exit poll numbers don't have anything to say. More than two-thirds of black voters in the state chose "uncommitted" over Clinton. Pundits are wondering if the Clinton campaign "may have reason to worry about her grasp on the African-American vote." Has the recent squabble over Clinton's comments on Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson hurt?

And speaking of attention-garnering statements, did Huckabee's "change the Constitution" comments hurt him in the Michigan primary? It's hard to tell. Huckabee did see a slight uptick after the comments, but still lost evangelical voters to Mitt Romney. (Exit poll data available from CNN and MSNBC.) Among Republicans who identified themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, 34 percent voted for Romney, 29 percent voted for Huckabee, and 23 percent voted for McCain. Evangelical turnout was significant: 4 out of 10 Republicans identified themselves as born-again or evangelical. In past polls, about 18 percent of Michigan residents have identified themselves as evangelicals.

Romney took the non-evangelical vote, too, with 39 percent of the vote (McCain had 34 percent, Huckabee a mere 8 percent. Even Ron Paul did better than Huckabee, with 9 percent of the non-evangelical vote). In fact, the only areas where Huckabee did particularly well was with voters who said abortion should illegal in all cases, those who attend church more than weekly (Romney ran away with the weekly attenders, McCain was a clear favorite of the nonattenders), and those for whom the candidate's religious beliefs "matter a great deal."

Romney actually did quite a bit better in Michigan than he has elsewhere among voters who say the candidate's religious beliefs matter somewhat (41 percent vs. 31 percent in New Hampshire and 26 percent in Iowa). Remember that in New Hampshire, the non-born-again Episcopalian-Baptist McCain won the "candidate's religious views matter a great deal" vote. One wonders how people are hearing this question; where are they putting the apostrophe? Are they saying their candidate's religious views matter a great deal? Or are they saying that the other candidates' religious views matter a great deal? Earlier, political analysts were suggesting that Romney's Mormonism might be a liability to his campaign. Now one wonders if Huckabee's religious statements are a liability as well. As CNN's Rebecca Sinderbrand's said, Romney's win might not be the biggest story from the Michigan primary. "[T]he biggest momentum out of Michigan may not go to the winner, but to the story of an election eve comment from third-place Mike Huckabee, still resonating as the contest moves south."

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 16, 2008 | Comments (10)

It's the campaign quote of the day:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

The quote got a bit of play on MSNBC's Morning Joe show this morning:

A provocative statement, certainly. But what does "amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards" mean? Does it mean that the Constitution does not measure up to God's standards? Is the Constitution anti-God? Would the addition of a human life amendment and a federal marriage amendment would make it measure up to God's standards? And is Huckabee suggesting that those who oppose these amendments, say, because of their views on federalism, are trying "to change God's standards"?

I can see how support for a human life amendment and a federal marriage amendment can win votes among some politically conservative evangelicals. But honestly, I'm thinking that this quote probably cost Huckabee more evangelical votes than it won him. The strongest supporters of those amendments have made the case on pragmatic grounds, not theological ones. James Dobson, for example, doesn't say the federal marriage amendment is necessary to bring the Constitution in line with God's standards. He says it's necessary to keep marriage from being redefined legally and culturally.

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 15, 2008 | Comments (31)

A recent Time profile called Mars Hill Bible Church pastor Rob Bell "largely apolitical." Is he? The current issue of Relevant asks the question as his state heads to the polls. He answers:

We refer to ourselves [at Mars Hill] as aggressively nonpartisan, so we don't engage in partisan politics in terms of "Here's whom you should vote for; here's whom you should support." We do acknowledge that the Gospel has deeply political edges to it, but that should not surprise anyone. Jesus was killed because of how He confronted a particular socioeconomic religious system. He's a first-century Galilean revolutionary who proclaimed a Kingdom other than the kingdom of Herod, so the Gospel does have political edges.

The interest is in giving voice to people who have no voice and using all of our abundance and wealth and resources on behalf of those who have a shortage. Some of our pastors had a meeting with the mayor of [Grand Rapids], which was simply for the purpose of asking who the most forgotten and the most hurting in our city are. They mayor had several very specific answers, and so we've actually reorganized a whole area of our church, putting the majority of our efforts around trying to take care of the worst problems in our city. I don't know if you would say that's political or not, even though it involved meeting with the mayor, but if Jesus comes to town and things don't get better, then we have to ask some hard questions.

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 15, 2008 | Comments (14)

This was supposed to be the year the Democrats got religion. Too bad somebody forgot to tell the pollsters. One of the big untold stories of the Iowa caucus is that only Republicans were asked about their religious affiliation.

The problem isn't just that we don't know how many Iowan evangelicals voted for the various Democrats (it would be interesting to see, for example, if Edwards scored as well among evangelicals as he did among conservatives). The problem is that we don't know whether Democrats as a whole have succeeded in attracting more evangelical voters. (Usually somewhere between one quarter and one third of evangelicals vote Democratic.) I'm told we'll see some Iowa caucus poll results soon (not from Edison Media Research, the company that does most of these entrance and exit polls) that may shine some light on the religion questions.

The good news is that Edison Media Research has repented, and today's New Hampshire exit polls (via CNN [Rep | Dem] and MSNBC [Rep | Dem] )had many religion questions for both Republicans and Democrats.

Clinton, it seems, took the moderately religious (those who attend church monthly or a few times a year), while Obama took the devout (weekly attenders) and the nonreligious (those who never attend church). Roman Catholics (the largest religious group among New Hampshire Democrats, with 36% of voters in that primary), overwhelmingly chose Clinton (43%) over Obama (28%). Those who said they had no religion supported Obama (47%) over Clinton (28%), and that formed a remarkable 22 percent of Democratic voters.

Unfortunately, voters in the Democratic primary were not asked if they consider themselves evangelical or born again.

Republicans were, and 22 percent said they were evangelical or born again. One third voted for Huckabee, 30 percent voted for McCain, and 24 percent supported Romney. But McCain had a very strong showing among among those who said they were not evangelical: 38 percent. (Romney had 32 percent, Huckabee 7 percent).

It's helpful to compare the evangelical numbers with the political identification numbers. As usual, the evangelical Republican vote was not synonymous with the "very conservative" Republican vote. One of five voters in the Republican primary identified themselves as very conservative, and they went overwhelmingly to Romney: 42 percent (compared to 21 percent for Huckabee and 19 percent for McCain). The Arizona senator scored highest in all other political identification categories.

Anyone care to interpret McCain's winning the "candidate's religious views matter a great deal" vote? Can voters even describe McCain's religious views?

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 8, 2008 | Comments (4)

The analysis you've probably read this morning or heard last night was that Mike Huckabee won the Republican caucuses in Iowa because of evangelicals. The WashingtonPost.com headline right now: "Evangelicals Fuel Huckabee in Caucuses." You probably also heard a lot of references to Pat Robertson's second-place Iowa win in 1988.

"Evangelical Republicans in Iowa chose one of their own in Mike Huckabee," writes Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press. "He made his religious beliefs and his rock-solid opposition to abortion, gay marriage and gun control central parts of his campaign - and it paid off."

The Wall Street Journal's Gerald Seib agrees. "So much for the idea that evangelical Christians are a dispirited and declining force in the Republican party," he writes. "Last night they showed up in force -- in stunning force, actually. ... In a very real sense, evangelical voters, as much as Mr. Huckabee, won Iowa's caucuses on the Republican side."

Andrew Sullivan is fairly predictable, with the headline, "The Christianists Triumph."

ABC News explains the headlines: "Evangelical Christians accounted for a remarkable six in 10 GOP caucus-goers, and they favored Huckabee, a Baptist minister, over Mitt Romney, who's Mormon, by a broad 46-19 percent. Among the remaining, non-evangelical Republican voters, by contrast, only about one in seven supported Huckabee, and Romney won easily, with 33 percent."

But 46 percent of the evangelical Republican vote means that most evangelicals did not vote for Huckabee, notes Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Huckabee fan Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News notes on his Beliefnet blog that Huckabee "won just about every Republican demographic -- especially, please note, the middle-income voters and below. He was especially strong among younger voters. The only caucusgoers Romney dominated were the well-off ($100K+) secular urban moderates. If you think Huckabee's only a phenomenon of the religious right, explain those numbers, willya?"

In a separate post, Dreher continues:

Believe me, you don't get the [Dallas Morning News]'s endorsement by being a candidate who can only speak to religious and social conservatives. ... [I]f anything Huckabee's religious conservatism was a liability with our board. What carried the day for him with a majority of the board was his pragmatism, the fact that his religious beliefs (as evidenced by his record as governor) led him to use government to help those who are struggling to make it ... and the fact that he is pitching himself as a different kind of Republican, one who wants to distance himself from the wearisome partisan trench warfare of the past 15 or so years.

Don't discount the evangelical factor, says New York Times columnist David Brooks. Just understand that the evangelical factor isn't what some people think it is: "Some people are going to tell you that Mike Huckabee's victory last night in Iowa represents a triumph for the creationist crusaders. Wrong. ... [E]vangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He's funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he's not at war with modern culture."

It's wrong to assume that Huckabee's Iowa win was about "abortion, gay marriage, and gun control" and not about the economy, Brooks says. "Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has. In that sense, Huckabee's victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition. ... Huckabee probably won't be the nominee, but starting last night in Iowa, an evangelical began the Republican Reformation."

So did Huckabee win because he's part of the Religious Right, or because he's not part of the Religious Right? I get the sense that Dreher and Brooks are downplaying the ways in which Huckabee resonates with the Religious Right even as other pundits wrongly equate that movement with evangelicalism.

But there's little doubt that Huckabee's opponents will try to paint his appeal as limited to the Religious Right. Why? They believe, as ABC's Gary Langer claims, that the Iowa numbers raise "the question of how well Huckabee's appeal can travel. There are far fewer evangelicals in some other states, notably New Hampshire; and their share in the Iowa caucuses, a low-turnout event in which a highly motivated group can have a large impact, may be hard to replicate elsewhere."

Could be. But those who think Huckabee's win last night is a rerun of Pat Robertson's surprising second-place showing in 1988 don't know what they're talking about. Not only are the two men very different politically, but, as The Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti notes, "second place isn't a nine-point victory."

Posted by Ted Olsen at January 4, 2008 | Comments (15)

I'm proud of our own coverage of Romney's "Faith in America" speech (here, here, and here). But that doesn't mean I'm not jealous of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly's phenomenal roundup of scholars' reactions over at their election blog.

I don't know how many people the PBS program asked to respond, but they got brief reactions from Allen Hertzke, David Davenport, Steve Monsma, James K.A. Smith, David Gushee, Kimberly H. Conger, Richard Wightman Fox, Ronald C. White, Leo Ribuffo, David O'Brien, Randall Balmer, and Charles T. Mathewes. The Newsweek/Washington Post blog On Faith did a roundup too (with an impressive lineup that included Martin Marty, Stephen Prothero, and Richard Bushman, the world's top Mormon/Mormonism historian). But I found Religion and Ethics Newsweekly's a bit more provocative. Watch out, On Faith. PBS is right behind you!

One of the better observations in the Religion and Ethics Newsweekly lineup, I thought, came from Smith, who focused on the title of Romney's speech, "Faith in America." "From where I sit, it looks like Romney's 'own' faith is faith in America. Americans needn't worry about Romney's Mormonism because, at the end of the day, the faith that trumps all others is 'Americanism,'" he wrote. "If evangelical culture warriors had worries about Romney's faith, his jeremiad today should confirm that he pledges allegiance to the same 'God of liberty' that they do. We're all Americanists now. But I hope Mr. Romney and his culture warrior friends (whether on the right or left) won't be surprised if some of us find it hard to believe in Americanism and its God of liberty."

Posted by Ted Olsen at December 7, 2007 | Comments (1)

With at least one poll showing Mike Huckabee leading nationally, with three points above Rudy Giuliani, everyone is wondering why. His answer may surprise you.

Do you think it's great that he's giving credit to Jesus, or do you think he's taking the Lord's name in vain?

(Saw this video, apparently from Liberty University, first at Sullivan's blog.)

Posted by Ted Olsen at December 6, 2007 | Comments (13)

Rick Warren continues to practice an evangelical pattern established by Billy Graham: Invite "friendly outsiders" to the platform if it furthers the crusade.

Last year he had Barak Obama appear at his HIV/AIDS summit, this year it was Hillary Clinton (though six presidential candidates were invited, only Clinton make a personal appearance).

The reactions were mixed, from deep concern to the standing ovation she received there. Rick again said that he doesn't have to agree with every position of a speaker if the speaker furthers the cause of fighting HIV/AID. For those, like me, who are catching up with stories from Friday and the weekend, you may find these summaries helpful:

Orange County Register

Boston Globe

Los Angeles Times

Here is an audio of Clinton's remarks, preceded by remarks by Rick Warren.

Here is the text of her remarks.

Posted by Mark Galli at December 3, 2007 | Comments (21)

In an editorial published last Sunday, The New York Times explored what it called "the worst long-term fiscal crisis facing the nation" - rising health care costs. The piece provided a helpful survey of causes and possible solutions, but no silver bullet. As the editorial concluded, "A wide range of contributing factors needs to be tackled simultaneously, with no guarantee they will have a substantial impact any time soon."

The most arresting part of the piece was its summary of the United States' health care dilemma, laid out in the opening paragraphs:

The relentless, decades-long rise in the cost of health care has left many Americans struggling to pay their medical bills. Workers complain that they cannot afford high premiums for health insurance. Patients forgo recommended care rather than pay the out-of-pocket costs. Employers are cutting back or eliminating health benefits, forcing millions more people into the ranks of the uninsured. And state and federal governments strain to meet the expanding costs of public programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

Health care costs are far higher in the United States than in any other advanced nation, whether measured in total dollars spent, as a percentage of the economy, or on a per capita basis. And health costs here have been rising significantly faster than the overall economy or personal incomes for more than 40 years, a trend that cannot continue forever.

Indeed, rising health care costs have become a burden not just for the working poor, but for many middle-class Americans. It's an issue that's already on the minds of voters - in a New York Times-CBS News poll, Iowa Democrats likely to attend the January 3 caucuses called it their top priority - and it's going to gain more public attention as the presidential campaigns continue. Democratic candidates will make sure of that.

"I don't think you can run for president today without having a universal health care plan that covers everybody," Hillary Clinton said recently, "because we want to go into a general election with that issue against the Republicans."

That Democrats plan to make health care reform a major part of their platform in 2008 - and that Republicans will be forced to respond - is unsurprising, perhaps. But what is surprising is how little evangelical Christian leaders have said about the issue.

In March, the president of the Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Richard Land, supported a call to re-authorize and expand the federally funded State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) so that every child in America could have health coverage - a proposal that seemed relatively uncontroversial, at least until President Bush opposed SCHIP's expansion on the contention that it would move middle-class children off of private coverage and onto government coverage.

The social-action ministry Sojourners has also called for health care reform, but its reach among evangelicals is limited. Why aren't more Christian leaders speaking up?

In the last several years, the National Association of Evangelicals has denounced torture and mistreatment of India's Dalits. It has also cautiously supported creation care and released a comprehensive public policy statement entitled, "For the Health of the Nation." The statement lists such areas of concern as freedom of religion and conscience, protection for families and children, protection of all human life, compassion and justice for the poor, global human rights, the pursuit of peace and restraint of violence, and biblically based creation care. Ironically, for a document called "For the Health of the Nation," it makes only passing mention of health care. Yet the average American is more immediately affected by rising health care costs than by, say, whether or not their community recycles.

No doubt evangelicals are as split on health care reform as they are on many other issues. But if we want to present a fully orbed vision for public policy, then we need to start engaging more deeply with the issue of affordable, adequate medical care - and soon. A community grounded in God's Word and dedicated to proclaiming the One who came to save the sick, the poor, and the needy ought to have something to contribute to the rising discussion.

Posted by Madison Trammel at November 27, 2007 | Comments (12)

Many have called Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani hypocritical. Robertson has compromised his position on abortion and gay marriage in order to hitch his wagon to the presidential contender.

Not so, says Naomi Schaefer Riley, in a opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal. (It deserves to be read in full.) In fact, Robertson's decision fits in a long tradition of evangelical support for an agressive foreign policy toward ideologies deemed to threaten Judeo-Christian civilization.

Riley quotes Richard land, who says evangelicals have long been interested in foreign policy. "The only part of the country that had majority support for Roosevelt's interventionist policies was the South." Then, after World War II, came godless communism. "Communism was seen as a direct threat to the Christian faith and Judeo-Christian civilization. Among Catholics and evangelical Christians, this message resonated first and with the most intensity."

For decades, evangelical missionaries returned home to their churches with stories from behind the growing menace. "Every year, we heard a speaker or two who had come from 'behind the Iron Curtain,' " says John Wilson, editor of CT's sister publication Books & Culture. They had harrowing tales to tell, sometimes first-person, sometimes not. There was a palpable sense of a world-scale conflict with godless communism."

Though some disagree that the threat of Islamic extremism equals that of communism, a similar pattern is emerging among returning missionaries. "In the past you had missionaries come back and talk about being imprisoned. Now you have reports from people about beheadings and bombings," says Timothy Shah, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The fact the Robertson's endorsement has raised such objections shows that there isn't the same kind of wide agreement on foreign policy as there was in the heydays of evangelical anti-communism. It remains to be seen both if Islamic extremism is believed to be the threat that communism was and if Giuliani can be seen as an equal opponent as Ronald Reagan was.

Posted by Rob Moll at November 16, 2007 | Comments (5)

With the "What about Huckabee?" cries growing louder, the National Association of Evangelicals' poll reveals that many Christian leaders do see him as the best match for their values.

When making a specific choice Huckabee was clearly the leader with Sam Brownback, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson tying for a distant second place. Hillary Clinton was named, but only by those who don't want her to be a candidate.

Brownback resigned from the race October 19.

The Associated Press points out that Huckabee may be less conspicuous because, "His lack of money means Huckabee can field only eight paid staffers in Iowa, about half the size of Romney's campaign, and cannot air TV ads as Romney has done for months."

Some who took the NAE poll are worried that supporting a candidate who starts from behind is a losing bet.

There is no groundswell support for any Republican or Democratic candidate," says National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) President Leith Anderson. "Huckabee is a clear first choice, but there is concern that he is too far behind in the polls to catch up. If he does well in the Iowa caucuses or early primaries, then Evangelicals may suddenly rally to his support.

Can someone who was not the initial frontrunner really take the primaries? If you're looking at Republican candidates, it's not likely, according to a Pew Research Center poll. But the Atlantic Monthly points out that 2008 may be different: "Front-loaded primaries, early fund-raising events, and multiple potential front-runners make this season's guessing game harder - and possibly more pointless - than ever."

Posted by Susan Wunderink at October 26, 2007 | Comments (8)

National Review Online's Jim Geraghty scored a nice scoop following up on The Boston Globe's March reporting on The Arlington Group. The Globe had reported that the Arlington Group, a meeting of top-level conservative Christian advocacy organization leaders, is interviewing candidates in hopes that its members can "coalesce around one candidate that prominent members such as James Dobson ... could endorse individually."

"We've been meeting with candidates for a year, every one of the major candidates except Giuliani," Gary Bauer told Geraghty. "Many of us are intrigued and excited by Thompson, but we have great concerns about his advocacy of federalism in dealing with the issue of protecting the sanctity of marriage, and that is certainly an issue we want to discuss with him further." (Geraghty had a follow-up with Bauer after the Arlington Group's meeting Thursday.)

Another member of the Arlington Group, unnamed, confirmed Bauer's summary, and says the group hasn't "coalesced" yet. "There has been a great deal of excitement about the possibility of a Thompson campaign; many of us are very happy about how clearly he criticized and called for the overturn of Roe v. Wade," the source said. "But there is concern that the federalist constitutional amendment that he leans toward on marriage just wouldn't work."

Bad news for Mike Huckabee:

Asked about the rumor that members of the group might be flirting with Huckabee, this individual responded, while never mentioning the Arkansas Governor directly, "it's not just that the candidate will be philosophically in tune; we have a realistic understanding that in a cycle where everything is bunched up in the front like this, you have got to be able to bring in major resources, enough to compete in 20 states at once. This makes a number of candidates not as viable to us as they might otherwise be."

Remember: You won't hear the "Arlington Group" endorsing anyone. What you'll hear is Arlington Group members singing from the same songsheet. That's the whole idea of the group: to unify the efforts of religious conservative political groups.

Update: The Associated Press also has reporting on the Arlington Group's meeting.

Posted by Ted Olsen at September 7, 2007 | Comments (7)

In an opinion piece this week in National Review Online, S.T. Karnick suggests that two trends may help long-shot Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee actually win the presidency. Huckabee placed second in the recent Iowa straw poll despite barely registering a national blip in the race against better-known and better-financed candidates such as Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

The first trend, Karnick states, is that governors usually win the presidency, while senators (most of the other candidates) usually do not:

The reasons governors beat national politicians are probably fairly simple. They have accomplishments they can cite, have served as CEO of a large government organization (as the U.S. presidency is), and, most importantly, they don’t have a voting record on important and controversial national issues.

Senators, by contrast, don’t have the individual political-administrative accomplishments to which to point, have records dotted with controversial and polarizing votes, and typically have made a lot of enemies on the national level.

This does not bode well for the Democratic triumvirate, each of whom serve or served in the Senate. But of course several of Huckabee's Republican opponents have executive experience. Romney ran Massachusetts as governor, Giuliani ran Gotham as mayor. But Karnick says the hugely important evangelical vote is unlikely to coalesce around either of these two. Giuliani has character problems, while many Bible-believing Christians distrust Romney's Mormon faith (and perhaps his recent reversal on abortion?).

That's where Karnick's second reason comes in. Huckabee is a former Baptist minister, able to connect with evangelicals in a way the other candidates cannot:

A former Baptist minister who served two terms as governor of Arkansas, a state long controlled by Democrats, where he nonetheless enjoyed high approval ratings, Huckabee is hardly more obscure than Bill Clinton was in 1991 (unless you think Clinton’s tenure as leader of the National Governor’s Association made him world-famous). His appeal to evangelicals is a given.

So can Mike Huchabee become a viable presidential candidate and perhaps even steal the Republican nomination? It's an interesting argument. Stranger things have happened, I suppose. No one gave Clinton any hope against Bush I, after all.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at August 24, 2007 | Comments (30)

As the Deomocatic presidential pandering tour continues, the candidates held a forum last night for the party's gay and lesbian lobby (following a debate earlier in the week for leftwing bloggers). At least some of the party's homosexual supporters are, like many prolifers in the Republican Party, feeling used and taken for granted. According to coverage in today's Chicago Tribune:

Perhaps the most personal question of the evening was posed to Sen. Hillary Clinton by [lesbian rock singer Melissa] Etheridge, who told Clinton that she had felt personally hurt and abandoned by the Clintons after President Bill Clinton's inauguration.

"I remember when your husband was elected," Etheridge said, calling it a "hopeful time" for gays and lesbians. But "in the years that followed, our hearts were broken. We were pushed aside. All those great promises that were made to us were broken."

"What," she asked, "are you going to do to be different than that?"

Clinton said she remembered things differently, recalling the political appointments, public remarks and "the ongoing struggle against [conservative Republican House Speaker Newt] Gingrich and the Republican majority."

"We certainly didn't get as much done as I would have liked," Clinton said, "but there was a lot of honest effort."

While I disagree strongly with Etheridge on gay marriage, I feel her pain. As they say in the big city, you're graded not on effort, but on results.

Be that as it may, since the candidates are apparently meeting with every constituent group they can think of in their mad dash for the nomination, here's a modest suggestion: Why not meet with all those pro-life evangelicals who were promised that the Democrats would take their concerns seriously if only they would look beyond party labels and give them a chance?

For some reason, I'm not holding my breath. Here's what Heath Shuler, a new Democratic representative from North Carolina (and a self-professed pro-lifer), told CT recently:

I don't think it's as much about legal measures. Our communities have to do better. Our churches have to do better. I think that's part of growing up in a community like I did. It was a small, very [tightly] knit group, and you knew people in your community and your church whom you could lean on and [who] would help you make these difficult decisions. Everyone wants to talk to us about legislation.

Those are fine sentiments, but Rep. Shuler seems to think he was elected to be a pastor and not a legislator. We don't need more sentiments and promises, but more actions. It's time for some pro-life deeds to back up the pro-life words, Democrats. You received a good number of evangelical votes in the last election, which helped you to regain control of Congress. Don't presume those votes are now yours forever.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at August 10, 2007 | Comments (9)

Michael Luo has a piece in Saturday's New York Times on Hillary Clinton's faith:

Mrs. Clinton, the New York senator who is seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, has been alluding to her spiritual life with increasing regularity in recent years, language that has dovetailed with efforts by her party to reach out to churchgoers who have been voting overwhelmingly Republican.

Mrs. Clinton's references to faith, though, have come under attack, both from conservatives who doubt her sincerity (one writer recently lumped her with the type of Christians who "believe in everything but God") and liberals who object to any injection of religion into politics. And her motivations have been cast as political calculation by detractors, who suggest she is only trying to moderate her liberal image.

Posted by Rob Moll at July 9, 2007 | Comments (16)

The New York Times reports that former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will offer an explanation of his views on abortion.

The shift in emphasis comes as the Giuliani campaign has struggled to deal with the fallout from the first Republican presidential candidate debate, in which he gave halting and apparently contradictory responses to questions about his support for abortion rights. ...

The campaign’s approach would be a sharp departure from the traditional route to the Republican nomination in the last 20 years, in which Republicans have highlighted their antiabortion views.

Posted by Rob Moll at May 10, 2007 | Comments (1)

Politico.com is all abuzz (well, it has a news story and an op-ed, anyway) about John Edwards praying "in Christ's name" at a Nashville campaign stop after the Virginia Tech shootings.

"Does John Edwards include Jews in his prayers? Or Muslims? Or Hindus? Or any other non-Christians?" complains Roger Simon. "Edwards has a perfect right to pray publicly or privately any way he wants to. But people who are not Christians often feel left out of prayers like his." Simon also criticizes Edwards for not praying for gun control.

The original Politico.com news story is rather remarkable, detailing how a campaign stop to "roll out his long-planned agenda for revitalizing rural America" was transformed into a religious memorial service.

Posted by Ted Olsen at April 25, 2007 | Comments (2)