Political turnaround: Democrats are the ones talking about religion

Published: 2008-04-25

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Rev. Jim Wallis finds it unexpected and refreshing that the majority of "God talk" in this presidential election season has been among and about Democratic candidates and that the dialogue takes a broad view of what's important to religiously motivated voters. "The surprise is that something we believed in and hoped would happen happened a lot faster than we thought," said Rev. Wallis, executive director of Sojourners and a minister of the American Baptist Church, at an April 24 panel discussion on the role of religion in politics. For more than a decade, Rev. Wallis has been among religious leaders pushing to get politicians to see that issues such as poverty, world debt and global warming are important to millions of voters who believe faith calls them to consider more than just abortion or narrowly defined "family values" as election issues. He said he was pleasantly surprised to see that even among white Christian evangelicals -- a plum voting bloc for Republican candidates in the last few elections -- poverty and the Iraq War were polling as higher priorities than abortion and same-sex marriage.

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