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There has been coption a long time, to be sure, but the Left has decided to tackle the hold outs by subverting the institution from within intead of denigrating the religious altogether.

After the 2004 election, where the Democrat talking heads were bemoaning how religious conservatives (including black Democrats) continue to vote against their "own financial self-interest" on these religious issues.

Leftists Fight “Gundamentalism”

07/07/2008 6:08:24 AM PDT · by Victory111 · 58 replies · 2+ views

Cross Action News ^ | 7-7-08 | Mark D. Tooley

The “God Not Guns” coalition is predictably upset about the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. “It will embolden adherents of GUNdamentalism in their belief in the inerrancy of the 2nd Amendment,” intoned the Rev. Nancy Smith, coalition founder and chief. “Gundamentalism is a religious movement without spiritual grounding. Rather, it is rooted in the sale and promotion of violence.”

Obama's Pro-Gay Flyers (At Pride Festival)

07/01/2008 12:10:41 PM PDT · by Clint N. Suhks · 7 replies · 3+ views
CBNews ^ | 7/1/08 | David Brody

Barack Obama may be talking up his Christian faith like he's doing today in Ohio and trying his best to appeal to Evangelicals with a “new kind of politics,” but he’s got a problem. Many of his positions are the same liberal positions that have turned off Evangelicals for years. Obama delivered another speech about faith Tuesday. He’s done a few of these concerning his faith and how it shapes his public policy. But Sunday his campaign and the Democratic Party were handing out pro-gay rights flyers at the Pride Festival in St. Louis. How is that going to play...
Obama to Make Call to Expand Bush's Faith-Based Programs

07/01/2008 9:25:06 AM PDT · by shrinkermd · 25 replies · 3+ views
Wall Street Journal ^ | 1 July 2008 | Staff

Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy -- support some ability to hire and fire based on faith. Sen. Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty programs during a tour and remarks Tuesday in Zanesville, Ohio, at Eastside Community Ministry, which provides food, clothes, youth ministry and other services. "The challenges we face today ... are simply too big for government to solve alone," Sen....
Why Americans Hate Democrats—A Dialogue The unteachable ignorance of the red states.

11/05/2004 5:36:53 AM PST · by ClintonBeGone · 182 replies · 28,236+ views
Slate ^ | 11/04/04 | Jane Smiley

The day after the election, Slate's political writers tackled the question of why the Democratic Party—which has now lost five of the past seven presidential elections and solidified its minority status in Congress—keeps losing elections. Chris Suellentrop says that John Kerry was too nuanced and technocratic, while George W. Bush offered a vision of expanding freedom around the world. William Saletan argues that Democratic candidates won't win until they again cast their policies the way Bill Clinton did, in terms of values and moral responsibility. Timothy Noah contends that none of the familiar advice to the party—move right, move left,...
Why Americans Hate Democrats—A Dialogue The unteachable ignorance of the red states.

11/05/2004 2:54:06 PM PST · by USAF_ret · 12 replies · 835+ views
Slate ^ | Thursday, Nov. 4, 2004, at 3:24 PM PT | Jane Smiley

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant,...
Democrats and the God Gap

11/07/2004 1:55:26 AM PST · by Cincinatus' Wife · 56 replies · 908+ views
Los Angeles Times ^ | November 7, 2004

The transcripts show that John F. Kerry said the right things to connect with religion-minded voters, with his earnest speeches about God's work on Earth and invocations of faith and Scripture. Yet they landed with a thud on a populace conditioned to view liberal Democrats as faithless intellectuals. No doubt Kerry's stiff New England style didn't help. This is not what religious faith looks like to much of the rest of the country, especially the South. Yet one candidate's stiffness cannot fully explain the "God gap" that drives people of faith, and those more concerned with moral issues than economic...
Where is the 'Christian left'? ( WOW )

11/09/2004 6:53:03 PM PST · by Dubya · 74 replies · 2,295+ views
The Miami Herald ^ | Nov. 09, 2004 | Leonard Pitts

I have to thank Jimmy Carter for saving my sanity. Granted, his was not a presidency that one looks back to with fondness. Gas lines stretched forever, Iran took our people hostage, and there was disco. But Carter's ex-presidency has been a model of that unofficial institution. He has built homes for the poor, mediated wars, helped feed the hungry in Africa, fought disease in Latin America. In so doing, Carter -- a deacon of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga. -- has obeyed a directive that Jesus issued to one of his disciples.
Some Democrats Believe the Party Should Get Religion

11/16/2004 7:36:23 PM PST · by AmericanMade1776 · 65 replies · 1,017+ views
New York Times ^ | November 17, 2004 | DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Bested by a Republican campaign emphasizing Christian faith, some Democrats are scrambling to shake off their secular image, stepping up efforts to organize the "religious left" and debating changes to how they approach the cultural flashpoints of same-sex marriage and abortion. Some call the election a warning. "You can't have everybody who goes to church vote Republican; you just can't," Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, said last week at a forum on the election. Religious traditionalists including Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, and Jim Wallis...
From left, religious figures make a push [Only 12% cited gay-marriage as a moral crisis]

11/27/2004 4:57:13 AM PST · by johnny7 · 15 replies · 494+ views
The Boston Globe ^ | November 27, 2004 | By Glen Johnson

Liberal religious figures, concerned about broad moral issues such as world poverty as well as the perception that ''moral values" helped win the election for President Bush, are stepping up their organizational efforts to support left-leaning candidates and their causes to prepare for the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election.
Democrats Turn to Leader of Religious Left

01/17/2005 12:20:04 AM PST · by nickcarraway · 76 replies · 3,198+ views
New York Times ^ | January 17, 2005 | DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Democrats, reeling from the Republicans' success at courting churchgoers, are focusing new attention on a religious and political anomaly: Jim Wallis, one of the few prominent left-leaning leaders among evangelical Protestants. At the start of the Congressional session, Senate Democrats invited Mr. Wallis to address their members at a private session to discuss issues. A group of about 15 House Democrats invited him to a breakfast discussion about dispelling their party's secular image. And NBC News has enlisted him to appear as a guest during its inauguration coverage opposite Dr. James C. Dobson, one of the most prominent evangelical conservatives....
Democrats Eye Evangelical Vote (they don't get it)

01/19/2005 6:04:19 PM PST · by DBeers · 34 replies · 1,129+ views
Focus on the Family ^ | January 18, 2005 | Keith Peters

The party of abortion has tapped a leader from the religious left to help it get back in the good graces of the red states. Democrats are looking for ways to tap the evangelical vote that went so strongly for Republicans and President Bush in November, so they've enlisted the leader of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, to help improve their party's poor image in the eyes of Christians. Wallis, one of the leaders of the evangelical left, told The New York Times that Democrats have a problem: They are being perceived as secular fundamentalists. Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family...
The amazing true story of the liberal evangelical: His mission to save the democrats

01/24/2005 5:07:45 AM PST · by billorites · 23 replies · 943+ views
Boston Globe ^ | January 23, 2005 | Wen Stephenson

Like any preacher worth his salt, Jim Wallis, the self-described "progressive evangelical" leader and editor of Sojourners magazine who has lately been discovered by Democrats in Washington desperate to learn the language of "moral values," likes to tell a story to drive a point home. In his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" (HarperSanFrancisco), just published this week and currently sitting at #2 on Amazon.com, Wallis recalls speaking to "a group of Boston's best and brightest Left/liberal intelligentsia" gathered in "a large living room" a few blocks off Harvard Square....
Sister Hillary: Can the Democrats close the God gap? (morality of poverty...trump abortion...?)

01/30/2005 11:35:29 AM PST · by baseball_fan · 21 replies · 427+ views
The Economist ^ | Jan 27th 2005 | staff from Lexington

… Hillary Clinton, engaged in …God-drenching ...fundraiser organised by the Reverend Eugene Rivers…She lavished praise on faith-based organizations… ...Clinton's speech was part of a growing debate on the left about how to close the God gap. Democrats want to change the focus of religious debate from abortion and gay marriage to, say, war and poverty. ... …Hillary told …pro-choice activists not only that abortion represents “a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women” but also that “religious and moral values” are the primary reason why teenage girls abstain from early sexual activity. …more proof of Mrs Clinton's political maturity...
House Democrats to draw up faith agenda

01/31/2005 2:03:07 PM PST · by PDR · 80 replies · 1,226+ views
United Press International ^ | JANUARY 31, 2005 | UPI

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wants her party to develop a faith agenda for 2006 to try to reconnect with religious-minded American voters. Pelosi has tapped U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., to lead the effort to recapture faith-based voters who, exit polls indicate, constituted a substantial bloc of votes in the 2004 U.S. elections. Clyburn said he would convene a working group to review party policies and ideas and look at new ways to frame those issues in faith-based terms, Roll Call reported Monday. "Our problem is not our programs," Clyburn added. "It's been...
The God Gap

09/03/2004 2:36:08 PM PDT · by swilhelm73 · 12 replies · 474+ views
Weekly Standard ^ | 09/01/2004 | Terry Eastland

DURING THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION the Wesley Theological Seminary (in Washington, D.C.) sponsored a discussion of "Red God, Blue God: The God Gap in Presidential Politics: Is It Real?" So it was only fitting, since Democrats are on one end of that gap and Republicans on the other, for the seminary to host another confab in Gotham during the GOP convention. Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton's best press secretary, moderated a discussion at WNET Channel 13 (not far from Madison Square Garden) among Shaun Casey of Wesley Seminary, Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and John Podesta, a Clinton...
The 'God Gap' - Republicans Corner The Market On religious Voters

02/11/2004 10:08:06 PM PST · by Latest Samurai · 9 replies · 110+ views
ACUF ^ | Lowman S. Henry

The 'God Gap'Republicans Corner The Market On religious Voters by Lowman Henry The saying goes there are two things you should not talk about in polite company: religion and politics. Since I always like to turn political correctness on its ear, today we're going to talk about both at the same time. In the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential election much has been written about the wide gulf between the "blue" (ie: liberal Democrat) states, and the "red" (ie: conservative Republican) states. A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has shed considerable light...