Barack Obama was accused this week by a leading figure in the United States Christian right of twisting the meaning of the Bible to confuse American voters.
The attack by James Dobson, the founder of the conservative Focus on Family organisation, was framed as a wholesale rejection of the probable Democratic nominee’s views on faith.
It appeared to be intended to thwart Obama’s efforts to reach out to evangelicals.
”I think he is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter. I just don’t know whether he is doing it deliberately or accidentally,” said Dobson on his regular radio programme, in a line-by-line dissection of a speech that Obama gave to a liberal Christian organisation two years ago on the role of religion in public life.
Focus on Family also emailed news organisations’ internet links to the show.
Dobson seemed particularly incensed that Obama had compared him to the Reverend Al Sharpton and revisited the controversy over Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Dobson also took issue with Obama’s suggestion that religious organisations opposed to abortion should make their case in terms accessible to secular organisations, calling it a ”fruitcake” interpretation of the law.
”Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” Dobson said. ”What he’s trying to say here is unless everyÂbody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.”
The attack on Obama comes at a time when some established evangelical leaders are confronting the waning of their influence over US politics.
Religion remains a force in the US. More than 90% of Americans believe in God and more than half pray at least once a day, according to a study published this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Eighty percent of Americans believe in miracles.
But the evangelical community has grown disillusioned with George W Bush, who failed to live up to expectations as a born-again president.
Evangelicals are also unenthusiastic about the coming presidential elections.
John McCain emerged as the likely Republican nominee despite suspicion from evangelicals and outright hostility from figures such as Dobson, who said he would not vote for him, as he was not a true conservative. ”This is a year when we have a lot of frustration with the major political parties,” Dobson said.
The Democrats have been working hard since 2004 to win over a younger and more liberal generation of evangelical voters through Christian radio shows and blogs.
The Obama campaign offered a relatively muted reaction to Dobson’s comments — saying they were ”odd and curious”– choosing instead to go after McCain on the issue of terrorism.
It laid on a telephone conference call to try to prolong a controversy over remarks by Charlie Black, accusing the senior McCain adviser of indulging in scaremongering after he said a terrorist attack would help McCain in the elections.
The Obama team wheeled out a former member of the 9/11 commission to help make its case against Black.
In the call, Richard Ben-Veniste stopped short of calling on McCain to sack Black for comments that seem to politicise terrorism. But he said: ”I think the remarks were so out of place that they call for some recalibration in the thinking and perhaps a greater adherence to principle here in staying away from the politics of fear.”
This week Bill Clinton moved to put to rest doubts that he would work for the next Democratic nominee, releasing a statement pledging to help Obama win the White House.
It said: ”President Clinton is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States.” —