Obama talks God

Obama supporters hope that his comfort in talking publicly about his religious beliefs will both help Obama bridge some of the cultural gap that separates him from large chunks of the electorate and help him make inroads into the evangelical vote. This strategy suffered a huge blow with the Revered Wright affair which tied Obama’s faith up with a divisive, racialist world view; the new Newsweek poll shows that almost a third of voters state that Wright might stop them from supporting Obama. However, the Obama campaign clearly believes that talking about religion is still sensible politics. In this week’s Newsweek, Obama talks about how often he prays, his Bible reading habits and what he tells his children about faith.

One of the pluses for Obama in talking about his personal faith is that the subject encourages reporters to go a little easy.  Newsweek calls Obama’s spiritual journey a “uniquely American tale” and write that “He found Christ—but that hasn’t stopped him from asking questions.”