Barack Obama would be justified if he chose to push religion aside in the presidential race. Religion has rarely been a key issue for the Democratic Party, and personally, Obama, a Christian, has been smeared falsely - more than once - as a radical Muslim. But instead, the Illinois senator has called on the Democratic Party to reach out to religious voters.

"We know that 90 percent of Americans believe in a higher power, we know that huge chunks of voters in swing states consider religion a really important part of their lives," Obama told the Monitor. "If we aren't speaking to those issues, then I think we're missing a huge part of the electorate that cares about family, poor people, a lot of issues I care about as a senator and a presidential candidate."

In his approach to religion, Obama has walked a fine line, emphasizing the importance of Christian faith to his own life while advocating a universal ideology that respects the separation of church and state.

"I've always said that my faith informs my values, and in that sense it helps shape my worldview, and I don't think anyone should be required to leave their religious sensibilities at the door," Obama said. "But we have to translate those concerns into a universal language that can be subject to argument and doesn't turn into a contest of any one of us thinking that God is somehow on our side."

Locally, Obama's message has garnered support from liberal religious leaders. "People talk about the Christian church and think right-wing fundamentalism," said the Rev. Leanne Tigert, a pastoral psychotherapist and United Church of Christ minister in Concord who supports Obama. "Obama has really opened up an avenue for many of us 'progressive people of faith' that says you don't speak for us. We are people of faith, we are pro-choice, pro-gay lesbian equality, civil rights. . . . He's giving us a voice."

But in a party unused to speaking openly about religion, some voters are uncomfortable with the idea.

"I understand he's going down an avenue he feels he probably should because people look at Republicans as being Christians and Democrats as being godless heathen liberals," said Minette Sweeney, a registered Democrat and undecided voter from Claremont. "But I wish people would just leave a candidate's religion out of it. . . . I believe they're all just using God, and I don't think it's really that genuine."

A faith acquired

Obama was not raised in a religious household, he wrote in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope. His maternal grandparents were raised by practicing Baptists and Methodists, but the faith never took root with Obama's mother. Obama's father was raised Muslim but became an atheist. His stepfather was also a skeptic.

Obama says he found his faith while working in Chicago in the 1980s. Jerry Kellman, who recruited and trained Obama as a community organizer, said the job involved being "in and out of many churches."

"Part of what you do is show respect to people you're organizing," Kellman said. "Pastors like you to come to church."

In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama recalls a pastor asking where he found his faith. Obama started thinking about the pastor's question, and several people connected him with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ, a black church in Chicago.

In the memoir, Obama recalls hearing Wright preach about the need to face pain and despair with "the audacity of hope."

Obama describes his experience: "Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lions' den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears . . ." As he listened, Obama found tears running down his cheeks.

Obama wrote in The Audacity of Hope that he was drawn to the power of African-American religious traditions to spur social change. The black church taught him "that faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts, or that you relinquish your hold on this world." He wrote about the day he was baptized at the Trinity church, when "I felt God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth."

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