After years of attacking Democrats with relative impunity for their supposed moral failings, Evangelical leader James Dobson surely didn’t expect to suffer much of a backlash when he trained his sights on Barack Obama. Over the years, the party had practically cowered in fear and gone into radio silence when the head of Focus on the Family targeted one of its standard-bearers. So in a campaign that has already proved to be anything but predictable, the counterattack on Dobson this week epitomized the new, fraught political climate that Christian Right leaders like himself face. Earlier this week, Dobson used his popular Christian radio program to denounce a 2006 speech the Illinois Senator gave about the place of religion in public life. He took personal offense at the fact that Obama had referred to him by name in the same breath as Al Sharpton, using the two to illustrate the range of differences that exist within Christianity. But he also expressed outrage at Obama’s assertion that individuals can be moral without being religious. ‘He oughta read the Bible,’ said Dobson. Obama, he charged, was ‘deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview.’ But less […]