{"id":54,"date":"2008-09-20T23:30:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-20T23:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/obama-evangelical-vote-still-l.html"},"modified":"2008-09-20T23:30:47","modified_gmt":"2008-09-20T23:30:47","slug":"obama-evangelical-vote-still-l","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/obama-evangelical-vote-still-l.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama Evangelical Vote: Still Looking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay, I know you were at the annual Religion Newswriters Conference the other day and may have seen first-hand pollster John Green<\/a>‘s startling-to-some news that after all the hyped up effort by Democratic Party officials to go after evangelicals, evangelicals are sticking with Republicans.  It appears that the numbers are virtually the same now for Obama as they were for Kerry at this time in the 2004 election cycle.  Apparently this is true even though the Washington Post <\/a>informed us a day earlier that one Obama operative is trying to figure out how to use Christian music to get votes.<\/p>\n

As I’ve said before, I don’t do solicited advice for any candidates: I prefer to give them all unsolicited advice though. My thoughts for the Democrats: don’t let the tail wag the dog on this religion issue.  One of the reasons about half of the electorate likes your candidates is because they often say that the agenda of the religious right is a bad one; they sometimes remind us that politicians aren’t supposed to impose their religious views on everybody else.  That resonates with the real Constitutionalists that are so often a part of Democratic Party victories. On the other hand, people of faith have been voting for Democrats for years based on the belief, which no pundit or spin doctor had to tell them, that at least since the Sixties, Democrats have been talking a lot more than Republicans about the kind of issues Jesus championed in the Sermon on the Mount.  (I always found it curious that as Republicans went ga-ga over posting the Ten Commandments, I never heard anybody want to post the thoughts of that peacenik, poverty-opposing preacher on the mountain.)<\/p>\n

John Green did point out, however, that Latino Protestants and Catholics are a bit more inclined toward the Democratic Party this year.  Could this perhaps be the result of the newly articulated distaste for immigrants by the Religious Right?  Could this be because (to bring this up again) the “Values Voter Conference” had a number of well-known anti-immigration advocates included CNN’s Lou Dobbs prominently presented?<\/p>\n

And, Jay, I have known you long enough to know that you don’t use the kind of rhetoric I cited in my last post that came from speakers at last weekend’s conference (and the quotes are accurate).  I just think it is important that people right, left and center condemn vitriol when they hear it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay, I know you were at the annual Religion Newswriters Conference the other day and may have seen first-hand pollster John Green‘s startling-to-some news that after all the hyped up effort by Democratic Party officials to go after evangelicals, evangelicals are sticking with Republicans.  It appears that the numbers are virtually the same now for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[25,26],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-separation-of-church-and-state","tag-john-green","tag-polls-christian-music-evangelical-vote"],"yoast_head":"\nObama Evangelical Vote: Still Looking - Lynn v. Sekulow<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/2008\/09\/obama-evangelical-vote-still-l.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama Evangelical Vote: Still Looking - Lynn v. 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Lynn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/32b\/32b0f12cad840c65bff61ad01e2664aax96.jpg","caption":"Rev. Barry W. Lynn"},"description":"Since 1992, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn has served as executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the preservation of the Constitution's religious liberty provisions (www.au.org). In addition to his work as a long-time activist and lawyer in the civil liberties field, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, offering him a unique perspective on church-state issues. An accomplished speaker and lecturer, Lynn has appeared frequently on television and radio broadcasts to offer analysis of First Amendment issues. News programs on which Lynn has appeared include PBS's \"NewsHour,\" NBC's \"Today Show,\" Fox News Channel's \"O'Reilly Factor,\" ABC's \"Nightline,\" CNN's \"Crossfire,\" CBS's \"60 Minutes,\" MSNBC's \"Countdown with Keith Olbermann,\" Fox News Channel's \"Hannity & Colmes,\" ABC's \"Good Morning America,\" CNN's \"Larry King Live\" and the national nightly news on NBC, ABC and CBS. On the radio, Lynn serves as host of \"Culture Shocks,\" a daily look at various issues affecting society and the culture. In the 1990s he served for two years as regular co-host of \"Pat Buchanan and Company\" and after that did a weekly syndicated radio program, \"Review of the News,\" with Col. Oliver North. Lynn is a regular guest on nationally broadcast radio programs, including National Public Radio's \"All Things Considered,\" \"Morning Edition\" and \"Talk of the Nation,\" as well as having appeared on national networks such as CBS Radio, CNN Radio, ABC Radio and AP Radio. Lynn began his professional career working at the national office of the United Church of Christ, including a two-year stint as legislative counsel for the Church's Office of Church in Society in Washington, D.C. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 2006, Lynn authored Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault On Religious Freedom (Harmony Books). In 2008 he coauthored (with C. Welton Gaddy) First Freedom First: A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State (Beacon Press). Lynn writes frequently on religious liberty issues, and has had essays published in outlets such as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Nation. Lynn also has op-eds published frequently by the McClatchy and Scripps-Howard newspaper chains. A member of the Washington, D.C. and U.S. Supreme Court bar, Lynn earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1978. In addition, he received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology in 1973. Lynn, who was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and raised in Bethlehem, Pa., lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with his family.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/author\/blynn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lynnvsekulow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}