Clinton, Obama to vie for the "faith vote"

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will court the "faith vote" at a forum this weekend, seeking support from a sizable constituency with a major influence on U.S. politics.

Organizers say the nationally televised forum on Sunday night at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, will allow the candidates to discuss how their religious faith informs their positions on issues such as global poverty, AIDS, climate change and abortion.

Religion plays a much bigger role in U.S. politics than elsewhere in the developed world, reflecting Americans' comparatively high rates of belief and church attendance.

"It would be unlikely anywhere else to find presidential candidates who would feel compelled to answer questions from religious groups," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"In many European societies, many politicians are reluctant to discuss their faith convictions publicly but here we expect them to do so."

The forum will be closely watched as it comes just over a week before Pennsylvania's crucial Democratic primary election that the Obama camp hopes could clinch the hard-fought contest to pick the party's candidate to run in November's presidential election.

It is also aimed at a national audience.

Conspicuous in his absence will be the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, whose party has been more closely linked with the "faith vote" -- especially among the evangelical Protestants who account for 1 in 4 U.S. adults.

McCain declined an invitation to the forum, which was organized by Faith in Public Life, a non-partisan resource center, and is expected to draw religious activists from across the political spectrum and a range of Christian backgrounds as well as Jewish and Islamic leaders.

"I frankly did not have the scheduling time to go there," McCain told reporters in Dallas. "I respect that forum and many other forums but I could show you a stack of requests to go to different forums around the country and I just simply can't meet all of those."

The evangelical movement has been broadening its agenda beyond "hot-button" issues such as opposition to abortion and gay marriage that helped propel President George W. Bush to the White House by getting conservative Christian Republicans to the polls.

The forum's topics reflect this change and some see a missed opportunity for McCain to address liberal evangelicals. Conservative Christians regard McCain with suspicion on many grounds, including his past support for stem cell research.

Centrist evangelical activists such as David Gushee, a theology professor at Mercer University in Atlanta, have spoken well of McCain because he has combined a staunch opposition to abortion with concern for climate change and an unflinching condemnation of torture in the U.S. fight against militants.

"This is what is so fascinating about his no-show. He is the one apparently who is least comfortable talking about issues of faith and how his faith might intersect with his public vision and this would give him a chance to do so," said Gushee, who will attend the event.

Obama and Clinton have both been more open talking about their faith in public.