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Steven Waldman

Have we ever had an ex-Catholic on a major presidential ticket? I can’t think of any. Palin was Baptised as a Cahtolic and later became an evangelical Protestant. This will thrill evangelicals (quite a few of which are ex-Catholics) but I wonder how Catholics will feel about it. It’s unclear when in her life she…

The always-shrewd Jeff Weiss at the Dallas Morning Newsy characterizes her as a post-denominational Christian. Doug Weed, a Bush friend, notes that Palin not only helps with evangelicals but with Pentecostals in particular, who have been especially cool to McCain. He also raises a very good political point: if Democrats start attacking her as a…

The campaign (and pundits) seem to think picking Palin will pick up disaffected Hillary voters. I doubt it. Let’s think about who the Hillary voters are. First, some are ardent feminists, furious with the rejection of a highly qualified woman. It’s unlikely that they’ll go for a pro-life, relative3ly unqualified candidate. A second bloc are…

For those who believe that God changes the weather to shape events, it might have seemed that He was favoring the Democrats when He ignored the prayer requests of those who beseeched him to rain on Barack Obama’s Invesco field speech. At first, religious progressives saw Hurricane Gustav as a second Democratic endorsement, forcing a…

The Democratic convention displayed two new modes of public Christian prayer. Recall that Franklin Graham was criticized for closing his prayer at George W. Bush’s first inaugural by saying: “Now, O Lord, we dedicate this presidential inaugural ceremony to you. May this be the beginning of a new dawn for America as we humble ourselves…

Several surprises: All week we’d been hearing that surrogates needed to attack McCain because the Obama needed to remain positive. Turns out he’s tougher on McCain that most of the previous speakers Republicans had tried to make him and his family seem alien and un-American. Obama could have chosen to say we should vote for…

I’m sitting in Invesco Stadium. Just heard Al Gore’s speech. It was actually less impactful being in this stadium than being indoors. There’s something about the vastness of the stadium that makes it much less intimate. The jumbotrons are father away, the sounds bit more muffled…. Gore’s best line: “The same policies all over again?…

Joel Hunter, a self-described Republican evangelical, is doing the closing prayer tonight. I bumped into him at Invesco before the festivities began, and asked him how he prepared. He called Billy Graham, he said. The ailing evangelist, said he thought it was a “magnificent opportunity” and that he was “proud that somebody of your stature…

The Obama campaign was very proud that it had scored several evangelical Christian leaders to do benedictions or invocations at the convention. But they were embarrassed when one of them Cameron Strang, backed out shortly after the announcement. Strang, the editor of Relevant, a magazine for young evangelicals, explained to me what happened. Strang had…

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