Prometheus 6

"If we show up," Obama told reporters aboard his campaign plane as he left Montana on Saturday, "if we let folks know that we're interested in them and we share a lot of common values, then we're not going to win 100 percent of the evangelical vote. We might not even win 50 percent of the evangelical vote. But we will at least take some of the sharp edges off this divide that's existed in our politics. And that hopefully will allow people to listen to each other, and that will help me govern over the long term."

Obama Addresses His Faith
Senator Describes Spiritual Journey
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 6, 2008; A01

ST. LOUIS, July 5 -- Sen. Barack Obama ended a week's focus on values by giving a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church a highly personal account of his spiritual journey and a promise that he will make "faith-based" social service "a moral center of my administration."

The address, to one of the oldest and largest African American denominations, brought the senator from Illinois back to friendlier ground after a week's tour through Appalachian Ohio, conservative Missouri, the conservative stronghold of Colorado Springs, North Dakota and hardscrabble Montana. But in its religious tones, the address had a far wider intended audience.

"In my own life, " he said, "it's been a journey that began decades ago on the South Side of Chicago, when, working as a community organizer, helping to build struggling neighborhoods, I let Jesus Christ into my life. I learned that my sins could be redeemed and that if I placed my trust in Christ, that he could set me on the path to eternal life when I submitted myself to his will and I dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works."

He suggested that he would apply the lessons of his faith to the problems he would face if he became president. "The challenges we face today -- war and poverty, joblessness and homelessness, violent streets and crumbling schools -- are not simply technical problems in search of a 10-point plan," he said. "They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness, in the imperfections of man. And so the values we believe in -- empathy and justice and responsibility to ourselves and our neighbors -- these cannot only be expressed in our churches and our synagogues, but in our policies and in our laws."

Of the two presumptive nominees for president, Obama has been far more outspoken about his religious beliefs than Sen. John McCain. Evangelical Christian leaders have remained skeptical, however, that Obama's faith comports with their own, especially given his support for gay and abortion rights.

James Dobson, the influential leader of Focus on the Family, last month accused Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology." Last week, some Christian conservatives sharply criticized Obama for unveiling a new campaign symbol for outreach to gay voters and for opposing efforts in California to pass a state constitutional amendment undoing a court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.

But Obama said Saturday that he is optimistic about his ability to win support among evangelical Christians -- if not to win a majority of their votes, then at least to hold down McCain's margins. McCain has had his share of problems with the group since, after his losing 2000 campaign, he described some evangelical Christian leaders as agents of intolerance. Dobson, for instance, continues to say he will never vote for the Republican.