Obama attracts young evangelicals

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By Jon Ward and Ralph Z. Hallow

Thirty-three-year-old evangelical Steve Knight - a pro-life voter who twice supported George W. Bush - is backing Democrat Barack Obama this election, displaying a mindset that angers and worries older leaders of the movement who call Mr. Obama an "abortion absolutist."

Mr. Knight and other evangelicals say Republicans have failed to deliver on the abortion issue, and they are weighing their electoral options this year. Sen. John McCain could be dealt a major blow if the liberal evangelical movement expands and persuades voters to embrace Mr. Obama or sit out the election.

"We did what they said to do. We elected all these people, we got conservative justices appointed at the bench, and nothing happened," said Tony Jones, the 40-year-old leader of Emergent Village, a national group that often speaks for more liberal Christians from an evangelical background.

Those evangelicals are suffering from "fetus fatigue" and want to "give up," said Douglas Groothuis, a philosophy professor at Denver Seminary.

Mr. Obama, who is pro-choice, is trying to give such voters a home. The Democratic Party Platform Committee has called for taxpayer-funded efforts to reduce the number of abortions, although it retained its traditional statement supporting "a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion."

Values voters were the story of the 2004 election, credited with delivering re-election to Mr. Bush. In the months after the election, Democrats vowed to try to peel those voters away from Republicans by talking about values and by trying to convince evangelicals that they should judge Democrats on issues such as fighting poverty and AIDS and protecting the environment and human rights.

On Saturday, those concerns will be aired when Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain attend a forum hosted by megachurch preacher Rick Warren, who has a congregation of 22,000 at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and who is trying to broaden evangelicals' concerns to the nontraditional social issues that Democrats espouse.

The challenge to the traditional order worries evangelical leaders.

"People see Warren holding hands with Obama at Warren's church and they think he is a Christian man, but when a candidate votes 100 percent for abortion, according to Planned Parenthood and NARAL, then that man's Christianity does not line up with the Christian truth upheld by the masses of true believers in America," said Lou Engle, founder of the Call, a group that holds cross-denominational events to promote spiritual awakening.

Mr. Engle, who is leading a gathering of people of all faiths on the Mall in Washington on Saturday, and high-profile evangelicals such as author Tim LaHaye say Mr. Warren is leading his followers astray and giving Mr. Obama equal footing with Mr. McCain, whose voting record is praised by pro-life groups.