Evangelicals have Bush's ear

WASHINGTON — Shortly after George W. Bush took office, an odd coalition came to the White House to see Karl Rove, the president's powerful political adviser, to ask that the United States intercede in the civil war in Sudan. The group included Charles W. Colson, the born-again Christian who spent seven months in jail for his role in Watergate, and David Saperstein, a reform rabbi and a longtime lobbyist for liberal causes in Washington.

The two-decades-old war in Sudan was not a front-burner problem for the new administration, and Rove was not a foreign policy adviser. But the religious strife between Christians and Muslims in a conflict that had killed 2 million people was of enormous concern to U.S. religious groups, particularly the evangelicals who make up a major portion of Bush's electoral base.

Rove, the participants in the meeting recalled, was unusually receptive during a nearly hourlong conversation. "He made it clear how seriously the administration was going to engage on this," said Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Close to three years later, the White House has lived up to Rove's promise to engage not only in peace talks in Sudan, but on other human rights issues of critical importance to U.S. religious groups, most notably sex trafficking and AIDS.

Administration officials and members of Congress say the religious coalition has had an unusual influence on one of the most religious White Houses in U.S. history. The groups have driven aspects of foreign policy and won major appointments, and they were instrumental in making sure that the president included extensive remarks on sex trafficking in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September.

No one disputes that Bush already cares deeply about these issues and has a personal faith that his advisers say brings a moral dimension to a foreign policy better known for war.

But it is also true, religious leaders and administration officials note, that white evangelicals accounted for about 40 percent of the votes that Bush received in the 2000 presidential election.

The human rights issues offer a politically safe way for the president to appeal to his base of white evangelicals.

"There are these issues below the radar screen that are of deep concern to the evangelical community, and while they are sincerely held by the administration, they also have the benefit of allowing the president to say, 'I have responded to what you wanted me to do,"' Saperstein said.