Word: christiane
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hard out there for a Christian Right leader. Last December came and went with barely a peep about a grinchy liberal "War on Christmas." The Republican nominee, John McCain, has refused to make the pilgrimage to Colorado Springs, telling the Focus on the Family leader to come to him instead. But the biggest problem is that Democrats - and Barack Obama in particular - are determined to make a play for a bloc of voters over whom Dobson and his colleagues have traditionally maintained exclusive control. And those voters seem willing to listen...
...Obama's willingness to talk about his faith, including his decision to become a Christian as an adult, has resonated even with religious conservatives who disagree with him politically. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals was part of a gathering of Christian leaders Obama convened earlier this month, and he says, "There was no way I could leave that room not knowing this was a fellow brother in Christ." The Democratic candidate has also been an outspoken critic of what could be termed "certainty" theology - the idea that real Christians have no doubts about their rightness...
...This language, combined with the Obama campaign's aggressive efforts to reach out to religious voters, has made it hard for the Christian Right to paint Obama as a secular bogeyman. His opponents have numerous lines of attack - is he a secret Muslim? A black nationalist Christian? A wishy-washy liberal Protestant? - but all seem to accept the basic premise that Obama is religious, which is key in a country where 70% of voters say they want their President to be a person of faith, according to Pew Research polls...
...Obama's theological beliefs are clearly more liberal than those on the Christian right. But it's the beliefs of the latter that are fast becoming a minority. A new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey of 35,000 Americans reports that 70% agree with the statement "Many religions can lead to eternal life," including 57% of Evangelicals. No less a figure than George W. Bush responded "no" when asked in 1999 if he believed heaven is open only to Christians. Those evolving, more relatively open-minded attitudes are one reason Dobson's organization has steadily lost members...
...stubbornly refuse to join the political fray. When Saddleback pastor Rick Warren welcomes Obama to his church with open arms or Mike Huckabee declares that Obama's religion and his former pastor should be irrelevant issues in the campaign, they undercut the criticisms made by their elders in the Christian Right. In 2004, there was near-universal agreement by religious conservatives that their "non-negotiable" issues were limited to abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage. But Warren and others now insist that the environment and poverty and health care reform are legitimate concerns as well, and the people...