Are the Democrats Getting Religion?
Stacey Pistritto Monday, 1 September 2008
Amy Sullivan, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008). 256 pp. $25.00.
E.J. Dionne, Jr., Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (Princeton, 2008). 251 pp. $24.95.
Jim Wallis, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (Harper One, 2008). 336 pp. $25.95.
In February 1993, the front page of the Washington Post dismissed conservative evangelicals as "poor, uneducated and easy to command." This was a prevalent Democratic caricature of evangelicals, which contributed to a persistent pattern of Democratic neglect of this constituency. Then came the presidential election in 2004, when three quarters of evangelicals voted for George W. Bush and helped carry him to a narrow victory in what many thought would surely be a good year for Democrats. Democrats were forced to consider the folly of turning their backs on the evangelical voting bloc; in the current election cycle, Democratic nominee Barack Obama is regularly using religious rhetoric to associate himself with core evangelical values.
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