Why the Christian right fears Obama

By Daniel Gilgoff

On paper, the Democrats’ nomination of Barack Obama is a gift to the Christian right.

Obama’s liberal record on gay rights and abortion — he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal “partial-birth abortion” ban and, as a state senator in Illinois, opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which attempted to protect unsuccessfully aborted fetuses — should make him easy enough for “values voters” to oppose.

And Obama has struggled among religious voters in this year’s Democratic primaries. In Ohio, his 2-to-1 loss among white Catholics and a 20-point loss among white evangelicals gave Hillary Clinton’s campaign a second wind that kept her in the race these last three months.

That same faith-based divide undergirded Obama’s losses in Pennsylvania — where Clinton took nearly 60% of weekly churchgoers — and Indiana. Heavily religious West Virginia and Kentucky, meanwhile, handed Obama his biggest defeats of this campaign, even though he appeared to have the nomination sealed up by the time voters in those states cast their ballots.

Yet for months, the Christian right had been more worried about the prospect of Obama’s nomination than Clinton’s. The evangelical Action Update” explained why the Illinois senator is as “extreme as they come on family issues” — using 26 footnotes to make its case — but barely mentions his Democratic opponent.

The conservative Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, for its part, had gone so far as to call Obama’s position on abortion “Hitlerian,” even though it was virtually indistinguishable from Clinton’s.

Of course, part of the reason for the Christian right’s focus on Obama is his emergence months ago as the Democratic front-runner. But the movement’s leaders also fear him because, despite his weak showing among religious Democrats, he has shown unusual potential for appealing to the rank-and-file evangelicals and other religious voters who usually back the Christian right’s Republican allies.

Openly faithful

That’s largely because Obama isn’t afraid to discuss faith’s role in his life, including his come-to-Jesus experience. Speaking of the influence that the now well-known Rev. Jeremiah Wright had on him, Obama told a church audience last year: “He introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him.”

Such talk is more reminiscent of George W. Bush than of recent Democratic presidential nominees. “To a lot of people, Sen. Obama is an unknown suit that talks the ‘evangelical talk’ without actually saying anything on his opinions or his track record,” says Tom McClusky, the Family Research Council’s chief lobbyist. “In the general election, Sen. Obama speaking ‘religion’ is going to sound more familiar and natural than Sen. (John) McCain.”

And — to evangelicals, at least — more familiar than Hillary Clinton, whose mainline Methodist background helps explain her preference for discussing the importance of doing good works over her personal relationship with Jesus. “Clinton does not compete with the religious right because her message is one not of hope and of healing, but of meeting the pragmatic concerns of economic advantage,” says Douglas Kmiec, a conservative Catholic legal scholar and former adviser to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (Kmiec has since endorsed Obama.)

“Obama has the capacity to win the soul of the working person,” Kmiec says, “whereas Mrs. Clinton speaks to the pocketbook and the here and now.”

Another asset for Obama among religious conservatives is his past expressions of admiration for the Christian right and its positions, unusual for a liberal Democrat. In The Audacity of Hope — whose title, taken from one of Wright’s sermons, is itself a testament to the influence of religion in his life — Obama writes of tinkering with his website’s indelicate language on his pro-choice position after receiving a letter from an anti-abortion doctor.

Obama’s gestures to the faithful come at a moment when evangelicals, nearly less allegiance to the GOP than perhaps at any time since Jerry Falwell launched the modern Christian right three decades ago. A report last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 40% of white evangelicals ages 18 to 29 identified themselves as Republicans. That’s down from 55% two years earlier. With more evangelicals taking up traditionally progressive causes such as the environment and international human rights, challenging the hot-button agenda of the old line Christian right, Obama’s pledge to work across the partisan divide might have special resonance with them.

To be sure, Obama still has his work cut out. After all, evangelicals and other religious conservatives have heavily supported Republicans for decades. Even so, Democrats need to make only small inroads among values voters to change the outcome of a close election. For instance, had John Kerry won half of Ohio’s weekly churchgoers in 2004 — as current Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland managed to do in his 2006 race — he would be in the White House today. Building such inroads has been made easier by McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

McCain’s challenge

Though McCain has vowed to improve his famously strained relations with the Christian right — remember his 2006 commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University? — he still lacks a full-time religious outreach director. Obama’s campaign hired such an operative well over a year ago and has expanded its faith outreach staff since then.

In the past month alone, McCain has outraged many in the Christian right by publicly rejecting Texas evangelist John Hagee and Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, two of his few major Christian right backers. He also had a relatively measured response to the California Supreme Court’s legalization of gay marriage, an issue that galvanizes social conservatives.

And though his solidly anti-abortion voting record could be a big selling point to religious conservatives, McCain has done little to advertise it on the campaign trail. “A number of us have met with his people to let him know that our base is going to be dramatically lacking energy unless he really makes their hearts beat on an issue like life,” says Texas-based Christian activist Kelly Shackelford, who runs an advocacy group associated with Focus on the Family. “The candidate has to speak on those issues in a way that people believe him.”

So far, McCain has demurred. Obama, though not telling values voters what they want to hear on issues such as abortion, is nonetheless speaking to them. And the Christian right’s heart is beating faster.

Lee ADDS: If TRUE Christians would only listen to what Barak Obama is saying as he claims to be a Christian they would see him for what he is…a phony Christian!

A TRUE Christian has FAITH. He or she has no doubt as to what lies ahead after death on this earthly plain. Obama says, “I do not know what lies after death.” He say, (I repeat) “I do not know…”

Where is his FAITH? I will answer that question…HE HAS NONE…AT LEAST NOT IN A Christian way of belief!

Obama claims that Jeremiah Wright, a so-called Christian Minister led him to Jesus. In his words (Obama’s) “A come-to-Jesus experience,” resulted from Wright’s leadership. Well, Wright teaches of a ‘Black Jesus,’ not Jesus Christ of the Christian Bible! Obama says “I want to heal this nation,” as he does everything in his power to pit Black against White and refuses to protect the weakest amongst us…the unborn, the newly born or the fetus on the womb!

If you are a Christian, if you know your destiny because you have the faith God gave you, if you believe in God’s Word then you will not support Obama and you certainly will not vote for him!

In closing I add, the Bible warns of “wolves clad in sheeps clothing,” well, what do you think Obama is? Wake up!