Under Obama, how would this religious left redefine the relationship between politics and religion in America?
The emphasis would be different. In the years the religious right sort of held the high ground, the two moral issues were abortion and same-sex marriage. Now, even the people who are as conservative as the more traditional evangelicals are saying Christianity speaks to more than those two moral issues. There’s also poverty, the moral justification for war and social justice. So what’s happening is there’s a bit of a shift from just those two religious right moral issues to a broader range. Now you hear evangelicals saying, “Neither party represents every moral position that I hold. So I am going to have to choose between the moral causes that I care most about.” For many right now, poverty, the war and social justice are outweighing abortion and homosexual issues. This is galvanizing the young, rallying the religious left and even winning over a lot of evangelicals who were hoping for a different emphasis in their evangelical Christianity when it comes to politics. If Obama becomes the
