I thought this Frank Schaeffer take on the wild and often wacky world of American evangelical spirituality and politics pretty insightful. And pretty frightening too considering this chaotic band of self-appointed religious leaders are the folks that want to run our lives and government in every possible way they can. I can't believe that once again our election could swing on how this demographic and it's multi-headed, leaderless, leadership of power mad, wannabe theocrats, moves.

God Against Obama: Dobson, Osteen, Corsi, the Evangelicals Strike Again

David Brody (who I thought was on vacation) is reporting that several pro-life figures had a hand in developing the Democrats' plank, notably the Evangelicals Joel Hunter, Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and the Catholic Douglas Kmiec.

This little band of straight white men held a conference call to celebrate their victory today. Except they didn't seem to be very celebratory:

Does that mean that they actually support the plank? Well, not exactly. When I put the question, there was dancing around from some and silence from others. What they've got via the language is reassurance that the Democrats are sensitive to pro-life concerns and prepared to undertake policies that overtly aim at abortion reduction. My colleague Renny Fulco points out that abortion reduction via contraception has always been the goal of Planned Parenthood, but on this the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, that remains an unacceptable approach in certain quarters.

Indeed, despite this little bit of lipstick added to the pig, it doesn't seem like they've got very much to celebrate. Gone is the Clinton-era "safe, legal and rare" moralism, replaced with some rather vague wording about "abortion reduction." In fact, says Dana Goldstein, you could read the new plank as a victory for feminist pro-choicers, not pro-lifers.

The idea here seems to be to give "moderate Evangelicals" and people like Kmiec some sort of talking point to use with their communities. Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working. Brody offers a skeptical take, asking if a Pres. Obama would back up his words with deeds. And naturally, the religious Right isn't buying it at all:

Not everyone in the anti-abortion rights camp is happy with the language. For many conservative Christians abortion is the taking of an innocent life, period.

Tom McClusky, the vice-president of government affairs at the Family Research Council, a conservative lobby group with strong evangelical ties, told Reuters that he didn’t really see how the Democratic Party’s take on the question had changed.

Now, you might say that the FRC is hardly the target audience here, and you would be correct. But the point is that abortion is perhaps the most polarizing issue in contemporary politics. The pro-life vote isn't going to be won over by hazy talk about "abortion reduction." As said in the earlier thread today, they want to see concrete action, not words.

Mark Silk, whose fast becoming one of my favorite bloggers, has a good take on what comes next:

A key point is to challenge Republicans to join them in a bipartisan ("common ground") effort to support funding for programs that make it easier for pregnant women contemplating abortions to choose to carry to term. Look for Obama to make that point when Rick Warren asks him about abortion at Saddleback on Saturday.

I'd be very surprised if Obama doesn't say exactly that. But I'd also be very surprised if he doesn't also reiterate a firm commitment to reproductive rights. Which means that for all their vaunted influence on this election, those "moderate Evangelicals" are going to come up short on this issue. For now, anyway.

I have to admit, crap like this drives me up a wall:

On Saturday, the presumptive presidential nominees will appeal directly to this religious center, and they'll do it on the same stage. The visit by Barack Obama and John McCain to Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in California isn't your typical stop on the campaign trail.  Although presidential candidates are usually focused on liberals or conservatives, these two have discovered that there are votes to be gained by wooing the moderate middle — and that includes the sizeable religious middle.

At Saddleback, Obama and McCain are expected to appear together, at least briefly, and will be answering questions on AIDS, poverty and the environment — areas of special concern to Warren, an evangelical pastor and author of the best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life.

Co-sponsoring this event is a multidenominational religious group called Faith in Public Life, whose Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders will be helping Warren devise his questions to the candidates. These religious leaders, along with the two candidates, are keenly aware that an issue such as the environment, for instance, can no longer be painted as a stereotypical liberal concern. The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released in February, found widespread support for stricter environmental laws and regulations among members of evangelical churches (54%), mainline churches (64%), historically black churches (52%) and Catholic churches (60%).

I dunno. Sounds to me like McCain's telling the religious Right to kiss his arse:

The Brody File is interrupting vacation to bring you an exclusive news story. We have in our possession a document that's being sent out by the McCain campaign to conservative, grassroots groups across the country today. It highlights John McCain's faith. To look at the document that's being sent out, click here. Read part of what it says below:

Dear Friends,
Many of you have asked about John McCain's faith. John McCain is a strong Christian, but he believes that, in the context of the campaign, his faith is a personal issue. Excerpts directly from John McCain's family memoir entitled, Faith of My Fathers, best explain the shaping and content of John McCain's faith.

Clearly, the McCain campaign realizes that these conservative activists want to hear more on his faith. This has been the word the campaign has been getting from these groups for months and now we're really starting to see the beginning of that effort. What's apparent is that the message from John McCain to religious groups is that if they have questions when it comes to his faith, they should read his book and not hold their breath for him to talk about this from now to November. They need to understand that he's not going to open up beyond the book excerpts and they'll have to live with that.

Brody wonders if this is going to work. I think the answer to that is obvious:

Presumptive presidential candidate McCain’s running mate selection is the “most important” decision of the campaign, said Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to CBS News.

If McCain picks a pro-choice running mate, Land said, it will only confirm the mistrust of evangelicals toward the candidate that some have criticized as being too liberal.

“[H]e has no room for error, no margin for doubt,” noted the head of the public policy arm of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

No way is the religious Right going to settle for vague statements about the importance of faith and McCain's welcoming of "traditional values." They want it written into policy, and more important, into personnel. Things are getting down to brass tacks, in other words. McCain has no later than the GOP convention to bring conservative Evangelicals home, and I take Land at his word: it's going to take a Veep selection to buy them off.

McCain is so screwed.

As a larf on the side, look at the names they're floating: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who's up to her neck in emerging scandal, dirty moneygrubber Mike Huckabee, Mittens Romney, and the man Jack Abramoff promised to name a sandwich for, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor.

The religious Right is so screwed, too.

The eggheads at Trinity College (check the URL) make sense of the race for the Evangelical Soul:

The latest CBS poll has white evangelicals choosing McCain over Obama 58 percent to 24 percent, with 15 percent undecided. If the undecided break 50-50, that would give Obama nearly one-third of the white evangelical vote--a big improvement over Kerry's performance in 2004. For him, opportunity knocks. McCain, by contrast, has got to ratchet up his evangelical outreach. By the Republican Convention he should have locked up this part of the GOP base, and as of now he hasn't.

It's possible that this poll is an outlier, given the widely-touted possibility of Obama reaching the 40% mark with Evangelicals. On the other hand, it matches up with recent Pew polling on the subject. We'll see.

What's more interesting is to do the bar-napkin calculations: Obama hopes to reach one-half of fifteen percent of about 25% of the electorate. So .50 x .15 x .25 = .01875%. That might not sound like much, but it works out to be a hair less than 3 million voters, give or take. And given that most presidential elections are won in the 3-4% range, it's a significant margin.

So you can see why both campaigns might want to chase those votes. Certainly for McCain, it's the difference between a viable campaign and a one-way ticket to BobDoleLand.

It doesn't completely answer the question of why Obama would be working so hard to get their votes, though. Given their previous voting patterns, a fifty-fifty split in the undecideds might be a bit optimistic. Something more like 75-25 is a safer bet.

As well, it makes a difference where those votes are located. If 75% of the undecided Evangelical voters live in Appalachia and the Deep South, Obama's not going to get them no matter what. If on the other hand they're clustered in Orange County, well then, going to see Rick Warren makes a whole lot more sense.

Last, you always have to ask if it might be easier to pick up an equivalent number of votes elsewhere. Say, northern Catholics?

Bottom line: the "Evangelical vote" might make the difference between a squeaker and a full-on rout. That matches with what I'm hearing through the back channels about how hard the McCain folks are pushing "The One" ad, and where. But if Obama's counting on that 2% as his margin of victory, well, he's taking quite a gamble.

For the record, I'll stick by my previous calls: Obama takes 40% of all Evangelicals, and according to my calculations above, perhaps 30% of the white Evangelicals. If he breaks 35%, he's on his way to a 300+ EV blowout, and I'll buy Amy Sullivan and Mara Vanderslice a bottle of champagne.

See, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

The conversation the right wants to have on abortion is the same tired extremist position of the past thirty years.  This position has been front and center of the recent appointments of Supreme Court Judges. It is hoped that they will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, which will in turn lead us into another long divisive struggle as the abortion issue is determined, if ever, at the state level. All the while mind you, abortions will continue on demand in this country. It seems as if the right wants women to continue to seek abortions so they can continue to roll it out every four years to inflame the conservative electorate.

I would suggest that Rick Warren have a conversation with Senators Obama and McCain about  not only why women choose to have an abortion, but also how women can be empowered to make other choices instead of abortion.

...

The conversation at Saddleback also should be about offering policy solutions that promote life and the support of parents beyond the birth of their new child. We have a moral obligation to find common ground, moving the conversation beyond the question of the legality of abortion and move towards actually reducing the need for abortion by investing in programs that will reduce both unintended pregnancies and abortions.

This all sounds very nice, and I'm sure it's well-intentioned. But it uses right-wing frames to build the discussion, then appeals to a center ground that's actually skewed pretty badly.

Friends,

This is Grant from the Matthew 25 Network.  By now you have probably seen the McCain campaign's "The One" Ad.  I wanted to provide somewhat of a "special comment" on this ad.  Because, I think many who don't come from an evangelical context may miss the point.  At the bottom of the page there is a link for our petition to call upon Sen. McCain to renounce these ads (Pastor Dan already blogged about it - thanks for the advice!), but first I want to walk through why they are so troubling.

The McCain campaign is claiming that it is "humorous," "a joke," and "a little fun."  Well here is the ad...and below the fold we'll tell you why this is anything but a joking matter -

Yesterday, I raised the question of why Democrats - really Obama's campaign and Faith in Public Life - felt obliged to attend the forum hosted by Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church.

The answer to that question turns out to be pretty simple: Rick Warren reaches millions and millions of people. He asks, the candidates respond. Nobody wants to piss off Rick Warren. Fine.

Instead of using a rhetorical question to make my point, however, let's lay it out in positive terms.

1. Obama's attendance at Saddleback is not a problem in itself. I have no idea why Faith in Public Life would want to get involved in the program, but perhaps they'll give me a perfectly reasonable justification.
2. Religious outreach to Evangelicals is not a problem. As Jesse Lava points out in the comments, it's analogous to the 50-State strategy: you work to extend your capabilities even in areas (or demographics) where the chances for an outright win aren't great to keep pressure on the other team and on the off chance that something breaks your way. Over the long run, it's a sensible strategy.
3. Here's where the problem comes in: the way Evangelical outreach gets sold is ZOMG, there's a huge field awaiting the harvest if only Democrats will do X, Y, or Z!! But the way it gets defended is: it's a long-term project that will pay off over time, so be patient. Well, which is it?

   The math seems to indicate that as a short-term strategy, it's not working very well. Other than Evangelicals moving away from a Republican partisan ID, there's not much solid evidence to say that they're prepared to vote Democratic in 2008. There's plenty of anecdotal stories coming out about Evangelicals flirting with Obama, but many of those stories originate with the Jim Wallis crowd, who obviously have a vested interest here, and again, the numbers just aren't there.

   And if this is a long-haul strategy, boy, we sure seem to be putting a lot of eggs in one basket, don't we? Obama has done a few events with mainline Protestants, most notably speaking at the UCC General Synod last year, but I can't remember the last time he spoke to a primarily Catholic audience, and lately his religious outreach seems laser-guided on Evangelicals.

4. So it's not so much that I have a problem with the Evangelical strategy per se, but I do have to wonder whether it's going to pay the dividends promised. That's a particular concern because more and more it seems to be pushing out any other outreach. Jesse suggests that focusing on Evangelicals is worthwhile because they're the most responsive to religious messages, which very well might be the case. But my question is whether it's worth it to try to draw in a few Evangelicals with a religious message when an economic message, or one based on the war, could bring in many more Catholics and mainline Protestants?

   Put differently, the Evangelical strategy seems to be predicated on this being a swing election. But it's not. This appears to be a base election, with the Democratic base swelling.

To sum up, spending so much time on Evangelicals might be a good strategy under the right circumstances. But it's probably not worthwhile to pursue them to the exclusion of other religious groups - not to mention the secular folks - and nobody so far has been able to demonstrate concretely why these are the right circumstances and what the returns are likely to be.

I'm listening, I really am. But I'd like to hear more than "boy, there's a lot of Evangelicals out there." There's lots of other folks, too. Show me the math, somebody. Anybody?

This may not make me very popular, but I do have to wonder what it is anybody thinks a non-debate between John McCain and Barack Obama at Rick Warren's church is going to accomplish, other than stoke Warren's ego. The candidates aren't actually going to interact, and they won't take questions from audience members. They might just as well unveil a matched set of campaign ads and save us all 59 minutes.

This is indeed a curious event. What does Faith and Public Life get out of co-sponsoring the forum? Rick Warren is hardly a liberal. While he's good on a couple of issues like poverty and HIV/AIDS, " he opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and supports the death penalty" - and he's endorsed some truly nasty African homophobia.

I was all in favor of the last such event at Messiah College. That allowed Democrats to explore their values in a novel context. I'm sure that this one gives my friends at FiPL a higher profile, but the cost for that is putting a blessing on Warren as a centrist, a benediction I'm not sure he deserves.

But the powers that be within the Democratic party have apparently decided that their top priority in religious outreach this year is getting the kind of people Rick Warren represents. I don't know if that has anything to do with Leah Daughtry's program, or the influence of the usual suspects. It's a bad idea, whoever it belongs to. Here's the partisan ID among selected religious groups, according to the Pew Forum:

And here's how those same people broke for the candidates in a recent poll:

Given the first results, I'm willing to bet that the second is a bit of an outlier, especially since the second is based on Registered Voters, not a solid measure at this stage of the game. But the point remains the same either way. If you look at the numbers, Catholics and mainline Protestants are the swing vote this year, not Evangelicals. So what makes the latter so much more desirable than the former? I've never gotten a straightforward answer to that question.

I'd like to borrow John Cole's reaction to a Michael Gerson column in consideration of this piece from the New York Times Sunday magazine titled "Can Leah Daughtry Bring Faith To The Democrats? (This despite religious believers making up some 80% of the party.)

Cole says of Gerson's take on environmentalism:

Got it? Environmental activists are to blame for not working enough with the people who oppose them, denounce them, mock them, work openly to sabotage their efforts, and have created a cottage industry creating and spreading pseudo-scientific babble.

What twisted bastard at the Washington Post reviews these op-eds and thinks they are worth printing? What kind of jackass believes the real problem regarding the environment is the environmental movement, and not James Inhofe. This is like blaming doctors for not being willing enough to work with the tobacco industry to prevent cancer.

Now, this is far from an exact parallel. Evangelicals are not the enemy of the Democratic party. And while it's idiotic beyond belief that the Democratic party's faith outreach team has three Evangelical members, a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim but no mainline Protestants, everything I've heard about Leah Daughtry says that she is a thoughtful and effective political operative.

But for crying out loud, can the religious concern trolls please stop kicking the party in the nuts?

The aim, realistically, has been not to win endorsements but to alter thinking, both immediately and over the long term. During the 2004 campaign, by contrast, Terry McAuliffe, was introduced to Warren, whose congregation numbers more than 20,000 and whose books have sold millions. According to “The Party Faithful,” a book by Amy Sullivan, a Time magazine editor, McAuliffe put out his hand and said, with a blank gaze: “Nice to meet you, Rick. And what do you do?”

The fact of the matter is that the Republican party has invested millions, if not billions, or dollars and decades of effort in order to separate conservative Evangelicals from the Democratic party. They have made vilification and downright demonization of Democrats their stock in trade, routinely making the case that they hate faith, people of faith, God, and God's puppy. Yet for all we hear, it's Democrats fault because Terry McAuliffe blew a single conversation four years ago.

Maybe if we work harder all those conservative Evangelicals will fall into our laps!

Richard Land, who has long been the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the public-policy arm of the nation’s largest evangelical denomination, with 16 million members, credits the Democratic Party for reaching out respectfully to the born-again. “It’s certainly a better approach than that of the recent past,” he told me. But the idea that evangelicals, even young evangelicals, are going to subordinate their commitment to protecting life from the point of conception is, he argued, a notion born of Democratic blindness. “I don’t think the pro-choice community has ever really conceived of the anguish and moral outrage experienced by pro-life people over the issue,” he said, then referred to a poll showing that 18-to-29-year-old born-again Christians are more conservative on abortion than their elders. The young, he insisted, may be demanding “an expansion of the agenda” to include peace, poverty and the environment, but they do not want “an exchange of agendas” that would diminish the absolute priority of defending fetal life.

Or maybe they won't.

And please, pretty please with sugar on top, can we have an article on Democrats and religion that doesn't involve a retelling of Mara Vanderslice's life story? I've got nothing against her personally, but surely there is more to the story than the minor career deflation of a single 33-year-old woman.

If you just say up is down people don't know what to make of it.

McCain: Obama an extremist and possibly a socialist. Check out this video at about 2:30 from the end of the clip.
Also note the portion about McCain's changed position on the Bush tax cuts in which he just lied through his teeth about his own record. He never gets called on this sort of stuff.

More silly stuff below.

Chris Marlin-Warfield asks:

It would be far too laborious a task to list everything that those in the religious left do, because it gets done everyday and in a variety of ways. The religious left is made up of bloggers and activists and lobbyists and front-liners. We write, we call congress, we ladle out soup. There are religious people involved in every aspect of the broader progressive movement - sometimes for the same reasons as the secular people involved, sometimes for different reasons.

So why don’t people know?

Answers: Because the Beltway Villagers have decided in their wisdom that the religious left is all about chasing the votes of awesome Evangelicals who aren't actually liberals.