THE STRUGGLE FOR COMMON IDEALS As many of the present blogs indicate, religious leaders from every tradition, both Christian and not, are beginning to gather together–as distinct from the usual denominational gatherings of religious leaders common to most election seasons before this one-to articulate a common spiritual ideal for a nation in crisis at home…

  The language spoken at the Civil Forum at Saddleback was not the loaded tongue of Evangelical churches across America sometimes referred to as “Christianese.” Aside from one inquiry about the candidate’s personal faith in Jesus Christ, the values based political questions could have been delivered by Gwen Ifill as easily as Pastor Rick Warren.  The…

A new poll by the Barna group finds that Obama is leading in 18 of 19 different religious faith communities defined by the survey’s strict standards. McCain leads in only one–evangelicals. This is good news for Senator Obama and should translate into serious voting power in November.  It also provides a caution to him as…

I’m less certain than Mara Vanderslice that John McCain’s recent pattern of decrying Barack Obama’s “messianism” is a deliberate effort to label him as the Antichrist.  It’s not that I consider Team McCain incapable of “dog whistle” appeals to the Christian Right; their candidate has certainly mastered those dark arts in a variety of abstract references to his hatred of “judicial…

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