God-o-Meter may have joshed Barack Obama for laying his faith-friendly message on so thick–his campaign is now on a “40 Days of Faith and Family” tour of South Carolina–but make no mistake: Obama is courting religious voters more strenuously than any Democratic White House hopeful in recent memory (with only Hillary Clinton touching him in this cylce). That includes doing what many Democrats in Washington are still afraid of: pursuing the white evangelicals who comprise the GOP’s base. Yesterday, Obama gave what sounded to God-o-Meter like a testimonial about his born-again experience before a crowd of nearly 5,000 at the evangelical Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, South Carolina (audio here).
Speaking for 15 minutes, Obama characterized his post-college community organizing work in Chicago as “casting about… to see how I could participate in building God’s kingdom” and told how, after his organizing introduced him to various Christian ministries, “I accepted Jesus Christ in my life.” This comes after a week in which his campaign hosted “What’s Faith Got to Do With It?” forums in a half-dozen South Carolina counties. If Obama manages to deprive Clinton of the nomination, could it be that that a Democrat would owe his primary victory largely to–gasp!–religious voters? God-o-Meter thinks so, and can’t believe this could be true so soon after the 2004 Democratic contenders all but ignored the faith vote.

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