US candidates court evangelicals

Barack Obama and John McCain, in back-to-back appearances at one of the nation's biggest evangelical churches, disagreed on abortion…

Barack Obama and John McCain, in back-to-back appearances at one of the nation's biggest evangelical churches, disagreed on abortion and Supreme Court justices, while supporting letting states decide gay marriage.

"I am pro-choice," Obama said last night in response to questions from Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, pastor of the 20,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. "I don't think women make these decisions casually," he said.

McCain, appearing later, said life begins "at the moment of conception," and said he has opposed abortion rights for 25 years. "I will be a pro-life president," he said.

Democrat Obama and Republican presidential rival McCain, an Arizona senator, are courting evangelicals, who make up more than one-quarter of the US population. They are more numerous than Catholics or mainline Protestants, according to the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The two candidates embraced briefly at the end of Obama's hour-long interview and at the start of McCain's on the nationally televised forum. The meeting came after weeks of skirmishing over the two candidates' energy and tax plans.

Both candidates spoke of their Christian faith, with Obama saying he believes "that Jesus Christ died for my sins," and McCain, who has been reluctant to discuss his religious beliefs, talked about his personal experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Both Obama, an Illinois senator, and McCain said marriage is between a man and a woman, while supporting gay unions and leaving it up to the states to decide gay marriage.

On the question of Supreme Court justices, Obama said he wouldn't have picked Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia or John Roberts. McCain, asked the same question, said he wouldn't have picked Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter or John Paul Stevens.

McCain said he would only pick justices with a "proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution." Obama expressed concern about "the encroachment of the executive branch on the power of the other branches."

McCain soft pedaled his support for embryonic stem-cell research, which many evangelicals oppose, saying the issue has been a "terrible dilemma" that he's had a "great struggle" to solve.

Obama said stem-cell research on embryos that are "about to be discarded" is a "legitimate moral approach to take."

Evangelicals have backed Republicans for decades, with almost four out of five backing President George W. Bush in the 2004 election. McCain leads Obama among such voters 68 per cent to 24 per cent, according to a Pew poll released earlier this week.


When asked about his own moral failures, Obama referred to the troubled youth he has described in his memoir, saying "times where I experimented with drugs, I drank in my teenage years." He said he traced that to a "certain selfishness on my part."

McCain said his greatest moral shortcoming was ``the failure of my first marriage,'' without elaborating.

Obama has been trying chip away at McCain's lead among evangelicals by speaking openly about his faith, calling for expanded federal support for religious groups that provide social services and a promise to create a new White House office for the President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. His campaign is also reaching out to religious voters through ``faith forums'' at people's homes to discuss religious issues and politics.

The Democratic National Convention Committee announced it will hold, for the first time, faith caucus meetings in Denver next week. Each night, the official convention program will begin with an invocation and end with a benediction delivered by national and local faith leaders who will make up a range of denominations.


Obama also is reminding voters he's a Christian amid some voters' perception that he's Muslim. A Pew survey released last month found that 12 percent of voters incorrectly believe the Illinois senator is a Muslim and that many of those who do are ``significantly'' less likely to support his campaign.

McCain faces his own challenges in rallying evangelicals, with whom he has had an uneasy relationship. He riled many during the 2000 election when he called Jerry Falwell and other evangelical leaders ``agents of intolerance.''

Warren is part of a new generation of evangelical leaders who tend to be less partisan, less confrontational and more interested in issues such as AIDS and poverty than some of their predecessors such as the late Falwell, said Steve Waldman, editor-in-chief of the religious Web site Beliefnet.com.

Warren's book has sold tens of millions of copies. He has also built Saddleback into one of the largest of the nation's so-called megachurches.

Bloomberg