How Would Jesus Vote?

Most of these youthful evangelicals are still antiabortion, and many still oppose gay rights. But their priorities no longer stop with those two issues. And it is in large part because of changes in the Democratic approach to abortion that more moderate evangelicals are willing to give the party a chance.

Full-throated support of abortion rights has been sacrosanct to the Democrats for most of the 35 years since Roe v. Wade. In the 2004 campaign, all the Democratic primary candidates pledged their opposition to a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion at the annual NARAL Pro-Choice America dinner, a position then favored by only 20 percent of Americans. ("Keep your rosaries off my ovaries," went the liberal slogan.) That November, Bush won a third of the pro-abortion rights vote, while Kerry picked up only 24 percent of antiabortion voters.

That was it for Catholic Democrats. It was bad enough that they felt pressured to vote for abortion legislation that made them uncomfortable, then had to endure threats from angry church leaders. But if the result was a Democratic Party so marginalized that its inability to appeal to antiabortion voters cost one of their own the White House, what was the point?

So they set out to defuse the abortion issue themselves. In the fall of 2006, two Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives, the antiabortion Tim Ryan and the pro-abortion rights Rosa DeLauro, introduced legislation to reduce abortion rates by preventing unwanted pregnancies and providing support to pregnant women and new parents. That same fall, an antiabortion Catholic Democrat, Bill Ritter, won the Colorado governorship after convincing his party's activists and donors that a pro-life politician need not be actively anti-choice. In a few states, pro-choice Democratic candidates sat down with evangelical and Catholic leaders to talk about abortion. They didn't back down from defending women's right to choose, but they won with support levels from Catholics and evangelicals that were 10 to 15 points above the party's national average in the midterm elections.

Walking through Dulles Airport not long after losing the 2004 election, John Kerry was stopped by a supporter. The man shook Kerry's hand and told the senator that he was an evangelical. "I voted for you," he said, "and so did a lot of evangelicals. But you could have gotten more of us if you'd tried." Kerry was floored. Evangelical Democrats?

No wonder Kerry fared worse among evangelicals than any other Democratic nominee in modern history, losing the votes of nearly four out of five. To engage a constituency, a campaign needs to at least know it exists.

Even so, the Democratic nominee this fall will have advantages Kerry never did. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lifelong Methodist with years of experience teaching Sunday school in Arkansas who's married to the party's most prominent evangelical Democrat. Obama, a committed Christian, is more thoughtful and relaxed talking about religion than any other Democratic politician. Most important, they'll have the support of a party that is slowly starting to see that there are many faces of the faithful.

Amy Sullivan is nation editor at Time magazine and author of "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap."

thepartyfaithful@gmail.com