The decline of America’s religious right | Macleans.ca - World - USA

Given that 10 per cent of Americans believe that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is a Muslim, and many more believe he followed a preacher who is radical if not unhinged, the Illinois senator seems an unlikely candidate to deliver religious voters to the Democratic ticket. “Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama,” charged Alan Keyes, Obama’s Republican challenger for his U.S. Senate seat during the campaign in 2004, noting that as a state lawmaker Obama had voted against anti-abortion legislation. Yet Obama, the formerly atheist son of a religiously skeptical mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist father, is emerging as the candidate with the greatest chance in decades to coax at least some Christian evangelicals and other churchgoing voters away from the Republican fold.