An election about big ideas

Barack Obama is going after young evangelical Christians, the New York Times is reporting. McCain is not, or cannot. This may not hurt him, since many older conservative evangelicals will refuse to support Obama because of Obama's support of abortion rights, but Obama is looking for younger evangelicals, who are less interested in the hard-core Christian right—what Andrew Sullivan calls "Christianist"—point of view. But the support of this group is far less certain:

Gabe Lyons, founder of the Fermi Project, a nonprofit group that educates church and youth leaders about Christianity and society, said many young evangelicals from the left and right had been turned off to politics.

“Obama is doing a better job of talking about his religious views and values than John McCain is,” Mr. Lyons, 33, said. “The challenge is that the closer young evangelicals get to understanding his policies the more they will struggle with them and many will slowly back off because for them abortion is such a huge point.”

I don't know if Obama will be able to pick off many of these younger folks in the same way that he has other young people disaffected by politics. If he does, this will raise deeper concerns for older evangelicals about the power and sustainability of their movement. After a half century of moving into the culture, they may begin to wonder if they have been corrupted by it.