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Historian Says Links Between Democrats and Evangelicals Have Deep Roots

By Howard M. Friedman

Historian Ted Widmer writes a piece in today's New York Times Magazine titled Redemption Politics in which he makes the case that Barack Obama's outreach to evangelicals has deep roots in American history. He writes in part:

Maybe the distance between liberals and evangelicals, each eternal optimists in their way, is much smaller than we realized. In our week of national reflection, it?s worth recognizing that religious enthusiasm in America has as often as not had a reformist or even revolutionary cast to it....

We often forget how close the revolutionaries were to the Great Awakening of the 1730s and ?40s, when revival meetings were held across the colonies and apocalyptic expectation hung heavy in the air....

For most of American history, evangelicals were Democrats or their equivalents, profoundly uncomfortable near the temple of the moneychangers. Jefferson attracted huge numbers of voters simply because his running mate, Aaron Burr, was the grandson of the great evangelist Jonathan Edwards.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on July 06, 2008 (boomark / email).