The Campaign Goes Christian

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The first joint appearance of the general election season is tomorrow night. You’ve probably heard nothing about it. You’ll probably hear nothing about it.

Barack Obama and John McCain will both travel to Lake Forest, CA, tomorrow night for the Saddleback Civil Forum at Saddleback Church, one of America’s preeminent megachurches. (Today is the last day of the Obama family’s Hawaiian vacation.) The candidates will sit down with Rick Warren, Saddleback’s pastor and the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, to talk about global poverty, HIV/AIDS, and climate change. The topics will be a welcome departure, from Obama’s point of view, from the standard “values voters” issues of abortion and gay marriage.

The forum should be interesting for two reasons. First, it will be an opportunity to test my theory that Obama should do well in head-to-head events with McCain, and that, as such, regular town hall events would have been good for Obama, in contradiction to what the Obama camp apparently believes.

Second, the Christian demographic is very much in play in this election. John McCain is crushing Barack Obama among evangelicals, who seem to think that being a Democrat and being a respectable Christian are mutually exclusive. Last month’s NBC/WSJ poll put the gap at 64%-24%. (In 2004, Bush won that demo 8-2 over Kerry.) But Obama is doing surprisingly well among other Christians. The Washington Post and the Washington Times report that young evangelicals, concerned about global poverty, social justice issues, and the health of the planet, are considering Obama seriously. This, despite the fact that they probably don’t know Obama has introduced a bill to address global poverty and is one of the Senate’s leaders on the issue.

Furthermore, the Barna Group, a Christian research group, recently found that of the 19 “faith segments” it polled, only evangelicals lean toward McCain. Non-evangelical born-again Christians lean Obama 43% to 31% — if those numbers hold, it will be the first time in two decades the born-again vote has gone to the Democrat. “Notional Christians,” folks who consider themselves Christians but are not born again, favor Obama by an even wider margin, 44% to 28%. Obama also wins non-Christians, atheists, and agnostics. This represents a massive opportunity for Obama.

An additional factor: John McCain is unwilling to talk about his faith publicly, is less vocally pro-life than President Bush, and supports stem cell research, all factors that could depress evangelical turnout. McCain may own evangelicals as a religious group, but they may be smaller this year than in the past.

But let’s be frank. Who wins which religious group is unlikely to be affected by Saturday evening’s forum. It’s a Saturday after all, meaning that even the day-after coverage won’t leak into the work week. And the Olympics are on, with Michael Phelps’ quest for a record eight gold medals culminating on Saturday night. How much oxygen will there be left over for a forum on religion, AIDS, and global poverty? Not much, I suspect. It may take a gaffe, a lie, or a heated argument to really make news at Saddleback.

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That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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