Democrats strike back on faith issue

But such appeals have barely made a dent in the party's culture, which is increasingly secular and even hostile to faith-based appeals.

"There is a great deal of suspicion of making religious appeals of any sort inside the Democratic Party itself," says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., who writes on religion and politics.

One reason is that Democrats, more than Republicans, are very diverse religiously. It makes it difficult to find common ground, he says. Liberal religious leaders often don't have the politically active base that Republicans have found in evangelical congregations. "There are plenty of leaders, but not many followers," he adds.

Also, groups like Emily's List, which supports abortion-rights candidates, have become top party fundraisers. Anti-abortion Democrats complain that they are excluded from speaking at national party conventions and even party websites.

Conservative activists predict that the latest effort by Democrats, too, will fizzle. "Within the Democratic Party, there is an increasingly aggressive secular left that has driven people of faith, especially conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians, into the Republican Party. They recognize how damaging it is, but they can't fix it given who pays the bills and who is in charge: Emily's List and aggressively secular left Democrats," says conservative activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

But other analysts see an opening for change. "There has been a tendency to write off religious believers in the Democratic Party, because the party came to feel that its positions on abortion and gay rights and other cultural issues made it the enemy of religious people. Now, there is an understanding that that is not necessarily the case," says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

"There wasn't sufficient recognition that if a person had qualms about abortion, it may be because they had serious religious beliefs and not because they were opposed to women's rights," he adds.

Podesta, former chief of staff for President Clinton, says that Democrats who are religious feel as if they have been silenced over the past few decades, and are "enthusiastic about regaining a sense of moral authority." New core values to be emphasized include inclusion, building community, taking care of each other and being good stewards of the earth.

"Some people think we're nuts and that relatively little good could come from bringing progressive religious voices back into the public square. I guess I would say history judges otherwise," he adds.

Such a new strategy could be especially helpful in heartland swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where Catholic voters make up a significant proportion of the population. It could also help Democrats in Southern states such as North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas, as well as Florida.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, nearly two-thirds who attend religious services at least once a week vote Republican. The flip side for Republicans: For those who say they seldom go to church, two-thirds vote Democratic.

"The political right and political left have agreed that religion equals the religious right. The right has done this because they want to own the issue, and some on the left have done this because they almost want to dismiss the issue," says Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners, a magazine covering faith and politics.

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