Interesting insight into the Obama/McCain faith debate that took place on Saturday:<blockquote>Before last night, McCain had been widely criticized by Christian activists for keeping mum about his faith and about values issues like abortion and marriage Last night seemed to change that. How much headway did McCain make among skeptical evangelicals?
I’m a pastor, I’m not a prophet, so I would not predict how evangelicals are going to vote. I will tell you they’re not monolith. That’s a big myth. They’re going to make up their minds based on the hierarchy of their values. For many evangelicals, of course, if they believe that life begins at conception, that’s a deal breaker for a lot of people. If they think that life begins at conception, then that means that there are 40 million Americans who are not here [because they were aborted] that could have voted. They would call that a holocaust and for them it would like if I’m Jewish and a Holocaust denier is running for office. I don’t care how right he is on everything else, it’s a deal breaker for me. I’m not going to vote for a Holocaust denier…
It all depends on the hierarchy of their worldview of what matters most to them. My gut reaction when it was over was that Obama will pick up probably some younger votes and McCain will probably pick up some older votes and it might come down to which group winds up showing up that the polls.
He’s right about the hierarchy of values. It’s really about where you place the emphasis of how you’ll vote. There are some Evangelicals who have seen that voting pro-life hasn’t gotten them very far. We are still murdering babies after years of voting for Republicans and nothing has changed. There are other issues that Evangelicals are interested in: social justice, poverty, AIDS, etc. If they can’t see any movement on abortion, why not get the other things they are interested in? (If they can actually trust the Democrats to provide helpful solutions to these problems.)
What do you Obamanites think of Obama being compared to an Holocaust denier? I thought that was a little extreme for Warren to say even if he’s just characterizing what others may be thinking.