Evengelicals Sway White House Foreign Policies

The human rights issues offer a politically safe way for the president to appeal to his base of white evangelicals, who leading scholars and pollsters define by their membership in historically white evangelical denominations, like the Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God. Evangelical churches believe that the Bible is truth, that members have an imperative to proselytize and convert and that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation.

Mr. Cizik said that evangelicals were now more willing to work with Jewish and feminist groups on certain foreign policy issues and that the failure of evangelicals in the 1980's to meet their goals was in part a failure to collaborate. "Evangelicals have thought historically, `Well, we'll do politics the way we do faith — we'll just convert the opposition,' " he said. "But you can't do politics the same way you do religion."

The groups now find the Bush White House to have an open door, particularly with a president who uses evangelical language in his speeches and credits his faith with helping him to give up drinking.