By seeking common ground, they can make procedure less common.

From: USA Today

Realism seems to have struck some ardent foes of abortion. After 35 years of trying to outlaw the procedure nationally while chipping away at abortion rights state by state, they have decided to add a new and sensible initiative. They'll work with the other side to reduce the number of abortions....

Even before Election Day, a loose coalition of conservative academics, prominent anti-abortion pastors, lay Catholics and other activists began working with old enemies in the pro-abortion rights camp to push a new agenda passage of measures to provide low-income, pregnant women with the kind of services and education that could discourage them from seeking abortions. They are on the right track.

In fact, the abortion rate has fallen steadily for nearly three decades: In 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available, it was down 33% from its 1980 peak, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. The wider use of contraceptives and more effective birth control are major reasons.

Yet, in 2000, the abortion rate among poor women was still four times higher than for women making $30,000 a year or more, Guttmacher found. This argues for giving more support to low-income women to help prevent unintended pregnancies and to help those who want to have a child. The new coalition is working on the latter goal.

Unfortunately, this fresh approach has drawn anger from some in the anti-abortion movement, who see any compromise as selling out and continue to see outlawing abortion as the only answer...

No one is asking them to abandon their belief that abortion is murder, but the purists ignore a basic truth. Decades of debate since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision have barely moved public opinion. Abortion is legal, and four in five Americans want to keep it that way in some or all circumstances....

Finding common ground on such a personal and intractable issue had seemed impossible. But a diverse group of longtime abortion foes from conservative Catholic law professor Douglas Kmiec to Florida evangelical pastor Joel Hunter has done it in recent months.

We hope they can do even more, particularly in finding ways to make contraceptives more widely obtainable and in improving sex education. Meanwhile, if this first sign of detente in the abortion wars helps make the procedure less common but still available, it will be a notable accomplishment.

From the AP News:

Obama's election might open the door to a different breed of evangelicals — those who advocate consensus-building and expanding the agenda to include global poverty and the environment.

Joel Hunter, an Orlando, Fla., megachurch pastor, fits that definition. Hunter, 60, is anti-abortion but also signed a statement on climate change and has denounced "hateful immigration rhetoric." He also delivered the closing prayer at this summer's Democratic National Convention and prayed with Obama by phone Tuesday before the president-elect took the stage in Chicago's Grant Park....

There was some evidence Tuesday that younger evangelicals are drawn to a wider agenda. While younger white evangelicals did not vault en masse to Obama, the Democrat made significant inroads. Exit polls showed the proportion of white evangelicals under age 30 who backed Obama this year was double the 16 percent who supported Kerry in 2004.

Four years ago, white evangelicals under 30 were even stronger Bush supporters than those over 50....

From Samuel Rodriguez:

The Election of Barack Obama says the American idea does not stand captive by the demagogues or the power brokers in smoke filled rooms. The destiny of America rests in the hands of her people; the children of Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Grant Park.

What does it say about America? That racial equality can silence the voices of bigotry. That the composite dream of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan's City on a Hill where the true measure of a man is measured by one's character can be realized. What does it say? Obama's election makes the case that faith trumps fear while hope and change are not just simple sound bites or campaign slogans but the heartbeat of a nation looking for more.

At the end of the day, when the world asked, "Is the American idea dead and can America succeed in recapturing the dreams and aspirations of the world, particularly those held captive by poverty, totalitarianism, and hopelessness?" Out of Grant Park, Chicago, came a response. With a resounding and vociferous shout, the red, white and blue responded, YES. YES WE CAN!

This article from the New York Times quotes Matthew 25 Network founder Mara Vanderslice. It talks about Obama's gains among young evangelicals, who are seeing the political world in more holistic terms than the "traditional" evangelical voting bloc:

"There is definitely a generational division," said David P. Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University and author of "The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center."

"Young evangelicals," Dr. Gushee said, are "attracted to a broader agenda" beyond abortion and homosexuality, that includes the environment, poverty, human rights and torture.

Facinating map of how for the evangelical Christians vote broke on a state by state basis...compiled by Christianity Today, using CNN exit polls....

See the map here...

You can really see where evangelical Christians in battleground states went higher for Barack than his national average of about 1/4th of the white evangelical vote... some highlights:

Minnesota, Iowa and saw 38% of white evangelicals, Indiana and South Dakota was at 32% for Obama...Illinois saw 40% of the Evangelical vote for Obama...

"In Colorado, the base of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, the percentage of evangelicals supporting the Democrat doubled since 2004."

(HT to Beliefnet)

Snippets from today's Columbus Dispatch:

Obama Had Gains In Every Religious Group
The "God gap" is a little less noticeable today.

Conservative evangelicals, buoyed by President Bush's stance on abortion and a movement to ban gay marriage, heavily supported his re-election in 2004. Analysts talked about the "God gap," the difference in political philosophy between conservative religious people and more liberal and secular voters.

This year, the religious vote was drastically different, according to exit polls.

Barack Obama was popular with Jewish voters and those not affiliated with any religion, as was Democrat John Kerry in 2004. But Obama also won the majority of votes among Catholics, who supported Bush four years ago....

Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research, called it "religious rebalancing," a shift away from the political extremes of 2004. He said Obama won the religious middle that eluded Kerry.

Jones noted that Obama made his biggest gains over Kerry's 2004 performance among voters who attend church more than once a week, closing the gap by 8 points among a strongly Republican group.

Obama made some gains in every religious group, including the evangelicals who supported Bush in 2004. The exit polls showed that Republican John McCain won over Protestants and evangelicals, but not as solidly as Bush did four years ago....

David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, said Southern voters were still inundated this election cycle with apocalyptic warnings from conservative religious groups about the consequences of electing a Democratic president.

"But I think it's striking these fears had less impact than in 2004," he said.

And from Time Magazine:

Nationally, Obama captured 53% of the Catholic vote, a 13-point swing from 2004 and the largest advantage among the group for a Democrat since Bill Clinton. Obama also cut in half the Republican advantage among Protestants. And he made significant gains among regular worship attenders. Voters who attend religious services most frequently are still most likely to cast ballots for Republicans. But Obama won 44% of their votes, a 19-point shift in the category that, after the last presidential contest, inspired pundits to diagnose the existence of a "God gap...."

In [the battleground] target states, Obama both outperformed his national average among white Evangelicals and chipped away at the GOP's 2004 advantage. In Michigan, where the state party began building relationships with social conservatives in the western half of the state during the 2006 election cycle, Obama won 33% of the white Evangelical vote, a 12-point shift from 2004. The campaign's Evangelical outreach coordinator spent the last weeks of the race in tightly-contested Indiana, with impressive results -- 30% of the state's white Evangelicals voted for Obama (a 14-point gain), and the Democrat split the Catholic vote with McCain (a 13-point gain).

Even Colorado, where Kerry won a measly 13% of the white Evangelical vote in 2004, proved relatively fertile ground. The Obama camp reached out to moderate Evangelicals in Dobson's base of Colorado Springs, bringing in popular Christian author Donald Miller as a campaign surrogate. The result was a 29-point shift in the vote on Election Day for Obama. By contrast, in a state like Iowa, where the campaign had little to no religious outreach presence, the white Evangelical vote was unchanged.

The Matthew 25 Network would like to congratulate President-Elect Obama, Vice President-Elect Biden, their families, and their campaign on their historic victory in Tuesday's election. This is truly a great moment for America, and we look forward with hope and anticipation to his inauguration and administration.

Obama, who will be this nation's first African-American president, won in a landslide, winning traditionally "red" states like Virginia and Indiana as well as other states Bush won in 2004 like Iowa, Ohio, and Florida.

Many of the states Obama won were states targeted by Matthew 25 Network's outreach and advertising. We are proud of the candidate we endorsed and proud to have played even a small role in this historic election.

But we couldn't have done it without your generous support. Thanks for all your work - donating to put up radio and magazine advertisements, standing up against falsehoods when you heard them spoken, and participating in petition and letter-writing drives. Whatever impact the Matthew 25 Network had on this election, we had because of you.

Keep checking the Matthew 25 Network website as we present a summary of coverage on religion in the presidential election.

Thanks for your support!