12.06.2006
Democrat claims Christian souls (NZHerald.co.nz)
Wednesday December 6, 2006
By Andrew Gumbel
LAKE FOREST- If Barack Obama ends up running for the White House, expect to see this footage run over and over on a television screen near you: the charismatic black Democratic senator from Illinois talking the language of God and receiving a standing ovation from a packed crowd at one of the country's most prominent conservative evangelical mega-churches.
Obama entered the political equivalent of the lion's den - the sprawling campus of Saddleback Church in the most conservative far reaches of suburban Orange County in southern California.
Many evangelicals were appalled that he should be invited to address their own, given his liberal attitude to hot-button issues such as abortion and gay rights.
One fundamentalist leader said he represented "the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality".
A coalition of "pro-life" groups said they could never work with someone who advocated "the murder of babies in the womb".
And yet Obama not only survived the experience. He made perhaps the most powerful case to date that Democrats can talk to evangelicals, that Jesus is not a Republican, and that no voters are so ideologically distant that they cannot be wooed and won over.
"This is my house, too. This is God's house," he said.
"We've all got a stake in each other. I am my brother's keeper."
(More ... New Zealand Herald > World News)
By Andrew Gumbel
LAKE FOREST- If Barack Obama ends up running for the White House, expect to see this footage run over and over on a television screen near you: the charismatic black Democratic senator from Illinois talking the language of God and receiving a standing ovation from a packed crowd at one of the country's most prominent conservative evangelical mega-churches.
Obama entered the political equivalent of the lion's den - the sprawling campus of Saddleback Church in the most conservative far reaches of suburban Orange County in southern California.
Many evangelicals were appalled that he should be invited to address their own, given his liberal attitude to hot-button issues such as abortion and gay rights.
One fundamentalist leader said he represented "the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality".
A coalition of "pro-life" groups said they could never work with someone who advocated "the murder of babies in the womb".
And yet Obama not only survived the experience. He made perhaps the most powerful case to date that Democrats can talk to evangelicals, that Jesus is not a Republican, and that no voters are so ideologically distant that they cannot be wooed and won over.
"This is my house, too. This is God's house," he said.
"We've all got a stake in each other. I am my brother's keeper."
(More ... New Zealand Herald > World News)
Labels: 2008 election, New Zealand Herald, Obama
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