I think that Barak Obama is a decent and thoughtful person, and appreciate his attempts to reach out to the Christian community.

If the evangelicals don't agree to his appearance, too bad for them. But if they DO -- even with ill will -- it's another opportunity for them to see that Democrats (yes, even pro-choice Dems) are actually thoughtful and compassionate people. That's NOT a bad thing.

And if Jim Wallis continues to be pro-choice, but agrees with me on other issues, that's not a bad thing, either.

Would I prefer to have someone in office who agrees with me on every single thing? Of course! But if that isn't going to happen (and guess what: it isn't going to happen), then I don't think it's necessary to complain about the ways that Wallis or Obama thinks differently than I do.

If either Wallis OR Obama were to trash my positions or make it more difficult for the environment to be protected or for a woman to have the right to choose, then I'd object. But that's not the case here.

You can't negotiate with these people, you can't try to talk sense to these people...
--bush

Obama will never be able to get votes from the Falwells, Robertsons, and Reeds of the world.  But (imo) he has a much better chance of getting votes from church goers who may be against abortion but also want to see something done about the war, about poverty, about the death penalty, about torture, etc.  

You have a misconception about what an Evangelical, or even a Christian, is.  All Christians do not act/think like Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell.  Most Christians, and most Evangelicals, fall somewhere in the middle.  They may be conservative on issues like abortion and gay marriage, but they also have a tendency to be fairly liberal on other issues.  

I am of mixed opinions on this, having given up on religion when, as a child of seven, I watched the pastor of our church turn away a black family because, "We are, after-all a white church." Even then I recognized that this was wrong and I never attended church again (I decided I would rather be grounded or whupped before I ever went back; I took a lot of whuppings before my parents gave up).

OTOH, if we don't make overtures towards them and establish a dialogue, instead of the dual monologues so common today, we can never reach common ground.

Despite my dislike of gladiatorial contests, I seem somehow to have acquired a reputation for pugnacity toward religion. Colleagues who agree that there is no God, who agree that we do not need religion to be moral, and agree that we can explain the roots of religion and of morality in non-religious terms, nevertheless come back at me in gentle puzzlement. Why are you so hostile? What is actually wrong with religion? Does it really do so much harm that we should actively fight against it? Why not live and let live, as one does with Taurus and Scorpio, crystal energy and ley lines? Isn't it all just harmless nonsense?

I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally voice toward religion is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement. But my interlocutor usually doesn't leave it at that. He may go on to say something like this: "Doesn't your hostility mark you out as a fundamentalist atheist, just as fundamentalist in your own way as the wingnuts of the Bible Belt in theirs?" I need to dispose of this accusation of fundamentalism, for it is distressingly common.

Holy Books vs. Evidence:

Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a very different matter.

More...

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Yes, atheists are obsessed with God you may have noticed.

BILL MOYERS: I think the best arguments about God come from atheists.

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Yes, there's a famous, the great Spanish film director, Luis Bunuel, once teased his friends by saying that he wanted his epitaph on his tombstone to read: "Thank God I died an atheist." And they were all so upset that he had to tell them he was just kidding.

BILL MOYERS: In England. You said quote, "To stand in this house is to be reminded of what is most beautiful about religious faith. It's ability to give solace and to inspire. It's aspiration to these great and lovely heights in which strength and delicacy are so perfectly conjoined." More recently you said religion is the poison in the blood. So which is it? Poison in the blood or the muse of inspiration?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Well, it's both. Of course it is. It's both. And religion at its best builds Kings College Chapel. It builds the great masterpieces of the gothic arts. And I was at Kings College Cambridge, so it was a building that I looked out on from my window every day for three years, and had a deep affection for. And I know it very well. And the idea of being asked to speak there was very moving, you know. And I do believe that religion at its best has given people profound solace in the travails of life. And--

BILL MOYERS: And at it's worst?

SALMAN RUSHDIE: And at its worst it murders people.

BILL MOYERS: Poison in the blood.