The following is a portion of a report by Robert Marus from ABP News:
Following a trend of Democrats becoming more faith-friendly, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has hired a Baptist “faith guru†for her expected 2008 presidential campaign. Burns Strider, who has been the head of religious outreach for the House Democratic Caucus since 2005, will join Clinton’s campaign staff, according to the Hotline. The online daily is the politics arm of the National Journal, one of Washington’s oldest political publications.
Strider, a native of Mississippi, was raised Southern Baptist. He and his family now attend Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Washington. Clinton, a lifelong Methodist, has become more open in recent years about her faith. She is part of an exclusive women’s prayer group — many of whose members are the wives of prominent conservatives — that she joined while she was First Lady.
She also joined a Senate prayer group after she was elected to the Senate in 2000. Although rarely publicized, generations of Congress members have been involved in several bipartisan prayer and Bible-study groups.
Polls list Clinton as the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. She may have to run against other candidates who emphasize their faith.
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is also mulling a presidential run, has made multiple appearances discussing his Congregationalist faith. He was recently a featured speaker at an AIDS conference convened by Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Rick Warren.
According to The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, Obama has also assigned a staffer to faith outreach. In addition, other Democratic and progressive groups have begun to focus staff members on outreach to religious voters — many of whom had abandoned the party in the past 20 years. That trend showed some reversal, however, during the recent midterm congressional elections.
Related: Its OKAY to Mix Religion And Politics -If Your Sen Obama…