The further out there they get the more isolated they will be. That makes it more likely they will go third party at some point and seriously undermine the GOP.

"those who attend church more than weekly"

Is this a large group?  

And I'd say, we were lucky if they moved towards the Democrats at all, and an 8 point lag behind other groups was doing pretty well.  It's not likely to happen again in '08, in my opinion.

You mean gay rights and abortion aren't the only thing they don't have in common with us?  You mean that radical right-wing 'Christians' aren't intellectually or idealogically flexible?

NO WAY!

"Faith based" voters aren't conservative because of  their religious beliefs. They are religious because of their conservative beliefs.

They follow their particular brand of Christianity not because of all the things that are in the Bible, but because of the selective parts of the Bible which support their worldview. (It could even be argued that they've formed a new religion, a Christianity sans the teaching of Christ.) Thus alleviateing poverty (which was Christ's focus), and forgiveness are jettisoned in favor of judgement and punishment (per the Old Testament).

These people aren't religious fundamentalists -- they are conservative fundamentalists. Which means moderates and liberals CANNOT win over these voters.

The most surprising thing about David Kuo's interviews at the release of his book was he believed with apparent sincerity that the Republican brand of "Christianity" was about more than abortion and gay-hating.

Note: I'm talking about the politics and the politicians, not the day-to-day activities of those who follow the politicians.

The Religious Right is made up of people. Every one of them is open to persuasion that our belief in helping the poor and protecting God's creation is more important than the radical right's belief in punishment for everything. We do not have to give up our commitment to a woman's sovergnty over her body nor to gay rights.  We simply have to convince people that what we have in common is more important than what they disagree with us about.  If it doesn't work, we need to try to persuade them some more.  For every one that we convince, we get one more vote. Lets  lets not give up our principles.  Lets find common ground and then convince them that, overall, they should vote for us.  

I nominate this post for the revered "Golden Rhubarb Award for the Best Use of the Word Comity in a Blog Post Title."

It should be no surprise that the existing Christian talking head leadership is against social justice and service based ministry. It's a lot easier to take people's money on sunday while moralizing and making the audience feel good about who they are not, or at least claim not to be.

However there remains a larger group of Christians of many denominations who are not represented by this empty talk, who see a direct connection between the welfare of their neighbors and their religious self-worth. The spontaneous movement to rescind the unfair tax burdens of Alabama on RELIGIOUS grounds are a key indicator of the health of this movement.

Christianity has a rich history of progressivism and has only become a divisive and easily manipulated force in America over the last 40 years. There was much effort, planning and coordination from heavy republican donors and what were emerging American religious leaders to make this happen. It wasn't an overnight process. And undoing it will not be a one election cycle process.

Democrats can siphon off the parts of the bodies interested in what are liberal issues by reaching out to these population, in spite of open hostility from existing very republican leadership.

If you really want a 50 state strategy, then you need to court progressive southerners both black and white, many of whom will be heavily devout Christians.

Many of the "Christian" leaders are ripe for challenge, each have their secret problems as the fall of Haggard has demonstrated.

People dissed the blogs the first election cycle when there were few successes. People dissed liberal talk radio when its initial successes were achieved through much effort. And much like the recent ABC memo showing coordinating corporate advertising boycotts of Air America, it should be no surprise that similar groups are trying to prevent the coming emergence of Christian progressives.

I would say that this issue is far from over.

It's fairly clear that Evangelicals as a group aren't going to suddenly start voting Democratic en masse and trying to make this happen would lose us more votes that it gained, aside from all the anti-progressive moves it'd take to do it.

That said, I'm sure if the Democrats do focus on social justice and phrase it in a Christian manner (which will most likely sit fairly well with the rest of the country anyway) it'll attract a small proportion of hardcore evangelicals and many more of Christians in general.

Also, putting up feelers to this Hunter guy might be an idea. He's not going to agree with us on gay marriage or abortion, but if he'll lend his voice to approving environmental or anti-poverty initiatives, that has to be worth something.

David in NY asked: "'those who attend church more than weekly' Is this a large group?"

Lots of liberal Christians, often including me, attend church more than once a week.  We do things in church other than hold worship services, such as host homeless shelters, serve potluck dinners, study, marry and bury people, have meetings, host childcare centers, a lot of stuff. I don't know what the righties do.

I think that we too often are arguing apples and oranges on this issue.

No, members of the "religious right" aren't going to suddenly reverse course and vote Democratic.  Too much of their "faith" is invested in the GOP instead of in GOD in my opinion.  A belief that one party is "of the devil" isn't going to go away.

On the other hand, many church-going people are not of the religious right but still may well have bought into the propaganda that the GOP is the only party speaking to them at all; that the Democratic Party is "hostile" to them.  It's been spread through talk radio and the MSM for so long that it's just accepted as fact.

If we show that as the bull it is and so where our interests converge with theirs, we can pick off a few of them.

Look at the Obama story. He reached out and got rebuked by the closedmindedness of the religious right.  Who looks unreasonable and out of the mainstream?  Not him.

Will we ever pick up be a majority of them, probably not.  But, like the 50 state strategy, doesn't competing for every vote you can WITHOUT sacrificing principle or changing one's position on anything make sense?