America's religious landscape has changed since the 2004 election - and Barack Obama is benefiting

n 2004, John Kerry ran a fairly straightforward secularist election campaign, in effect ceding the so-called "values voters" to George Bush. Bill Clinton, among others, had counseled Kerry to moderate this strategy. Clinton even suggested to Kerry that he loudly oppose gay marriage in toss-up states like socially conservative Ohio, but Kerry begged off, explaining that he didn't want to appear intolerant.

After Kerry's defeat, Democrats resolved not to commit the same mistake again. They quickly formed committees and groups dedicated to casting Democratic party policies in a religious light.

Barack Obama, in particular, embraced this strategy. He shrewdly sensed the possibilities of poaching some values voters from the Republican party by adopting a tone of religious uplift and giving a religious patina to his policies, particularly his anti-war one.

Recent polls suggest that the strategy is paying off. According to the Pew Forum, Obama has scooped up a majority of "white non-hispanic Catholic" registered voters, with 49% of them supporting or leaning toward him and 41% supporting or leaning toward John McCain.

This is a notable feat, given that a rating for Obama's voting record on the moral issues most crucial to the Catholic Church -- abortion, gay civil unions, etc -- would surely rank near zero.

Obama also enjoys increasing support from "white mainline Protestant" registered voters. He has shot ahead of McCain 48% to 43% among those voters.

But something else is at work here, besides just Obama's effective outreach to religious voters. He is also benefiting from the leftward drift of religion in America in general. This is a long-unfolding trend that another survey -- this one commissioned by Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly and the United Nations Foundation -- points up.

Their survey found, for example, "generational change" among younger evangelical Christians who have adopted "a more inclusive definition of what it means to be 'pro-life' and are more supportive of efforts to combat global warming".

Another striking finding from the survey -- one which lends itself to Obama's anti-war pitch to Christians -- is: "The religious landscape has shifted with evangelical Christians now expressing the greatest support for an interventionist role, while more moderate religious groups like mainline Protestants and Catholics take a more isolationist posture".

Obama is deftly exploiting America's new Christian left. In recent days, his Catholic surrogates, such as the law professor Doug Kmiec, have, like those younger evangelical Christians mentioned in the survey, stretched the definition of the phrase "pro-life" to include many issues beyond abortion, thereby confusing some anti-abortion Catholics into supporting Obama.

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