News & Reporting

God-o-Meter caught up this week with Richard Cizik, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, the nation's largest evangelical organization. Cizik made news earlier in the week in Colorado Springs for questioning whether John McCain was a "principled person" and for "waffling on issue after issue." Cizik told GOM that requests from him and other evangelicals to meet with John McCain have gone unanswered, that when it comes to voting "a lot of evangelical don't think," and spoke candidly about racism Barack Obama may face within the white church.

Despite all Barack Obama's evangelical outreach efforts, polls show evangelical support for John McCain is approaching George W. Bush-like levels. That surprise you?

We do some of our own polling, so I had advance notice that there were some deep-seated suspicions of Obama. I wasn't surprised. I was a little disappointed. Not that I'm an Obama supporter. But I am interested in broadening the agenda of [evangelical] concerns. And I'm of the opinion that some people are going to vote Republican no matter what.... Party line voting in my opinion is unbiblical. It says you don't think. If you're simply voting on same sex marriage and abortion, you're not thinking. What I'm saying is that a lot of evangelical don't think, sad to say. The same is true for African Americans who, no matter who the candidate is they're just going to vote for the Democratic Party. So the African American left and the Religious Right is foolish.

So politically speaking, maybe the evangelical movement is changing less than the news media would have us believe.

There's a demographic shift that's occurring. Young [evangelicals] are less tied to the Republican Party. Those who are disaffected with the GOP are not becoming Democrats. They're becoming Independents. It's a slow moving earthquake that you don't fully recognize. I'm not trying to move anyone to become a Democrat, but to a spiritual, moral, and religious awakening. If all I'm about ...

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