How Obama is courting the new evangelicals

Democratic presidential nominee-to-be Barack Obama took it on the chin last week from James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family and a key political leader among Christian conservatives. Drawing upon a speech Obama delivered two years ago, Dobson claimed Obama was "deliberately distorting" Biblical teachings to "fit his own worldview, his own confused theology."

Dobson's words were the kind of critique that in recent elections have made leading Democrats cower and prompted other religious conservatives to fall in line behind the Republican Party presidential candidate, in this case John McCain.

Not this year. And depending on what happens in 2008, perhaps not ever again.

Consider the case of Kirbyjon Caldwell. He is a leading evangelical, a Methodist pastor of a Houston megachurch, and he has been so close with George W. Bush over the years that he delivered the benediction at Bush's inaugurals in 2001 and 2005 — exalting Jesus in each instance — and presided over the wedding of the president's daughter, Jenna, in May.

In response to Dobson's comments, Caldwell passed some judgment: he launched a Web site, jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com. It offered a point-by-point response to Dobson's criticisms of Obama and Obama's theology. Since its launch on June 24, the Web site claims that more 12,000 people have signed up in agreement. Caldwell has left no doubt: he's in Obama's camp.

Behold the splintering of the religious right.

This hasn't happened by chance. It's a combination of changing outlooks among evangelical leadership and some important political moves by Obama.

The founders of the religious conservative movement in the late 1970s are now entering the twilight of their careers. Jerry Falwell died in 2007, Pat Robertson has become a caricature (e.g., endorsing Rudy Giuliani to much derision in this presidential campaign), and Gary Bauer and Dobson are increasingly viewed as archetypes of a political past — the once powerful but now fading "old guard."

Today Rick Warren, the nation's über-evangelical and author of The Purpose-Driven Life, the highest-selling nonfiction book in the nation's publishing history, and Leith Anderson, head of the National Association of Evangelicals, both want to keep political parties — including the Republicans — at arm's distance.

In 2004, Warren decreed that five issues — opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, cloning, euthanasia, and research on stem cells — should drive the voting decisions of Christians, an outlook that firmly aligned him with the Republican Party. But Warren's political world view had been expanding ever since.

In early 2006, he said, "I'm worried that evangelicals be identified too much with one party or the other. When that happens, you lose your prophetic role of speaking truth to power. And you have to defend stupid things that leaders do."

Later that year he invited Barack Obama to speak at his Southern California church at an AIDS summit. Warren took a lot of heat from some evangelicals for inviting the pro-choice Obama but did not back down. It was a turning point moment for faith and politics — and a crucial step in Obama's outreach to religious voters.

Obama has not blinked in extolling faith throughout his campaign. While Gallup Poll data suggest that more than 10 percent of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, the Christian Obama often espouses a religiously infused message of hope and transformation. Indeed, he's offering more than words: His campaign has embarked on a massive political crusade to persuade religious Americans that Obama is their candidate.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that "Between now and November, the Obama forces are planning as many as 1,000 house parties and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits and telephone conference calls to bring together voters of all ages motivated by their faith to engage in politics."

And Obama just raised the stakes Tuesday, with a high-profile speech on faith in Zanesville, Ohio, a battleground area in a key Midwestern state — indeed, one that some evidence suggests George W. Bush won in 2004 in part based on heavy turnout tied to an anti-gay-marriage state initiative.

In his address in Zanesville, Obama said he would expand Bush's "faith-based" initiatives, but that he would make sure it is done in ways that are fair to believers and nonbelievers alike. The money quote is this:

"[M]ake no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this [faith-based initiatives] partnership will endanger that idea — so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work."

Obama's speech won't win over Dobson but is likely to be welcomed by Evangelicals 2.0 — Warren, Anderson, Brian McLaren, T.D. Jakes et al. But it also deviates from some traditional Democratic positions on religion in such a way as to be likely to raise concerns among some liberals, though not enough to be overly off-putting.

This is today's religious politics — faith infused in the political arena by nearly everyone, Northerners and Southerners, Republicans and Democrats. Obama is hardly the first to do so, but he may be charting a course that realigns the political allegiances of some evangelicals, particularly younger ones. In my next dispatch I will look at John McCain's response.

David Domke, a former newspaper journalist, is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington. His latest book, "The God Strategy: How Religion Became A Political Weapon in America," was published in January. He can be reached at domke@u.washington.edu.