Barack Obama fared much better among religious voters than John Kerry did in 2004 — and this piece from the Wall Street Journal helps to explain why:

The Obama campaign prevailed among Catholics despite sermons and letters from several conservative bishops across the country, who warned it would be a grave sin for Catholics to elect a candidate who favored legalized abortion. In a nod to abortion concerns, the party platform suggested bolstering aid programs to reduce the operations, which total more than one million annually.

The campaign staff enlisted Doug Kmiec, a Catholic adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign, and former Reagan White House aide, who threw his support behind Mr. Obama because of his opposition to other “life issues” such as the war and lack of health care. “People realized for the first time that there was an alternative way to promote the culture of life and how much they were missing in their faith tradition when they focused on the Supreme Court,” Mr. Kmiec said.

The model for Mr. Obama’s religious outreach was framed in 2005 by two Democratic advisers — Mara Vanderslice and Alexia Kelley, an evangelical Christian and a Catholic, respectively. They blamed Mr. Kerry’s loss among religious voters on his unwillingness to talk about his faith and address their moral concerns. In a white paper that circulated around Washington, the women said that if Democrats were going to shed an anti-religion reputation, candidates had to talk about faith, go on Christian radio, grant interviews to reporters for Catholic media and discuss issues that Republicans were not addressing: namely, poverty, immigration and the environment.

In 2006, Mr. Obama made a speech, “A Call to Renewal,” before a large crowd of Christians in which he discussed his faith and urged secularists and progressives to embrace moral issues. His staff mailed excerpts of that speech to 40,000 pastors, an aide said.

The next year, he began courting Christian professors, theologians and ethicists, writing letters expressing enthusiasm for their work and inviting them to meet with him. One, Christian ethicist David Gushee of Mercer University in Atlanta, eventually was invited to the Democratic convention to talk about his faith-based effort to stop torture.

There’s more at the WSJ link.