I agree that AA is not a non-neogtiable issue aka litmus test in the way abortion is. The only other real litmus test issue I can really see is SSM (I . Your original question was:

BTW, I’m wondering if there is really any issue other than abortion which actually separates Obama from most evangelicals?

but looking back at your previous post, I understand now that you meant issues where the evangelicals feel that their position is mandated by their faith, rather than being an issue where their prudential judgement/policy position differs from Obama’s position.

by the way, for some relevant (IMHO) polling see “The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes:A Baseline for 2004″ (2004 data, most recent I could easily find that specifically tabulates not just evangelicals generally but subgroupings; there’s a fair amount of polling to support a few points net leftward motion of the evangelical center since then):

http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/green-full.pdf

race-based AA page 31 31% support, 50% oppose

re energy policy, I couldn’t find any useful polling (hardly surprising).

Re school vouchers, while you’re right that in theory it ought not to be a federal issue, don’t think for a moment that a determined president couldn’t torpedo them. And that was an example I was thinking of where Obama so far has said “unconditionally no” but in a very polite way – see Daniel’s post not long ago on the topic.

For the record, I personally am conflicted but overall opposed to race-conscious AA, strongly in favor of Obama’s energy policy compared to McCain’s (I actually favor a much more aggressive one than Obama’s), conflicted but overall in favor of school vouchers, plan to vote for Obama, and am far away from the median evangelical position on most controversial topics. I see no value in understating the difference between their positions and Obama’s likely positions/policies.

Thanks. I’m not clear what the differences on affirmative action or energy policy would be. It doesn’t sound like a ltimus test in any sense, however. I mean, I understand that most evangelicals are more conservative to begin with, and hence more likely to oppose liberal positions, but I’m not sure where their actual religious views would conflict with Obama’s positions other than on abortion. Even on school vouchers, Obama has shown a willingness to be flexible. And that’s not really a federal issue anyway.

BTW, I’m wondering if there is really any issue other than abortion which actually separates Obama from most evangelicals?

Taking “Obama” here to mean positions he has staked on reasonably clearly without much waffling, at least so far, and “most evangelicals” to mean a position taken by at least 60% of evangelicals in relevant polling:

Affirmative action, energy policy, maybe school vouchers (different polls of evangelicals produce different results on that).

They find religion threatening when it is antagonistic to Western modernity and cosmopolitan tolerance. I imagine that Sullivan would object just as strongly if Wiccans obtained political power and tried to protect Mother Gaia at the expense of the American ecomony and individual’s property rights.

As for Sullivan’s “Christianism”, this has always been geared towards a particular strain of righteousness that is used to justify policies which he thinks suck and hurt people. I don’t think he’s against the idea of being motivated by religious ideals. Certainly his campaign against torture and the Iraq war in general is strongly motivated by Christian values. So I don’t think the charge of “Christianism” applies to Obama even within Sullivan’s broad definition. He’s just trying to make a show of being “fair” to both sides, when in fact it isn’t really fairness that Sullivan has been after, it’s certain policies that he wants defeated. That Obama is appealing to religious sensibilities is hardly new to Democratic politics. One can look at Bill Clinton for one, and the whole Bobby Kennedy wing of social justice, Martin Luther King, and all the way back to William Jennings Bryan. Democrats use religion to justify a collectivist response to social injustice, citing the obvious precedent of Jesus telling us to care for the poor. There’s nothing inherently wrong about this. In my view it’s only “Christianism” when it becomes demagoguery, but Sullivans’ definition of the term is so vague it only means “religious people who support policies I disagree with”. Of course he will now accuse Obama of Christianism for supporting liberal policies, if he so much as mentions his religious sensibilities in the process of advocating them. Who’d have guessed?