Barack Obama and the Jesus Machine

The news that Barack Obama has fallen foul of the conservative televangelist James Dobson - who came close to describing him as a fruitcake, a clear case of pots and kettles - may not be entirely bad news for the Democratic candidate.

Dobson, the founder of the Focus on the Family organization, is arguably the most influential and feared spokesman for the religious right, if only for his access to a daily radio audience of 20 million Americans or his six million-strong mailing list. No wonder the journalist Dan Gilgoff called his book on the organization The Jesus Machine.

From his 81-acre campus in Colorado Springs – which employs 1,200 people, a third of them answering callers who ring in with problems - Dobson daily booms out his message of a civil war of values and a frequently cranky not to say bizarre take on the world (Europe is pagan, SpongeBob SquarePants is gay, The Da Vinci Code was cooked up in hell, feminists are wicked).

Focus also offers its supporters religiously-tinged advice on everything from bed-wetting to drug addiction. Go to pluggedinonline.com and you can have an entertaining few minutes reading its film reviews and advice on whether true-believing Christians should go and see them.

Dobson, originally a child psychologist, rather enjoys the manipulation that goes with being courted by politicians. He makes much of his self-claimed political independence but his message is always on the right and he likes the fact that Republican hopefuls make pilgrimages to Colorado to seek his endorsement.

Dobson also likes the idea of breaking candidates as well as making them. In 1996 it seemed likely that he would endorse the hardline conservative Phil Gramm as the Republicans' presidential nominee, until they actually met. Gramm bravely told him that he was running to be president, not preacher: "I just don't feel comfortable going round telling other people how to live their lives", which caused Dobson to break off his support. "I walked into that room fully expecting to support [Gramm]. Now I don't think I would vote for him if he was the last man standing."

As might be imagined, Dobson was gung-ho for George Bush, but he appears to feel the same about McCain as he did about Gramm. And now Obama has received similar treatment, being extravagantly castigated all of a sudden for a speech he made two years ago in which he suggested that religious organizations opposed to abortion should make their case in terms accessible to the secular world - a proposal which Dobson has decided is a "fruitcake interpretation".

But Dobson is in a fix here. If he does not opt for either main candidate, what are his followers to do and where is his influence in the new White House? Younger evangelicals are starting to be interested in other causes, such as the environment, which Dobson scorns. They listen to him less and younger, less partisan preachers more. They tend to approve preachers who do not endorse particular candidates or tell their congregations how to vote.

The Obama campaign has put considerable time and effort into courting the religious vote (unlike John Kerry four years ago who deployed just a couple of part-time workers to canvass religious voters) and, helped by the absence of a credible religious right presidential candidate, it seems to be paying some electoral dividends.

Religious voters remain a potentially powerful segment of the electorate: about 23% of voters identify themselves as white evangelicals and, importantly, they turn out and vote in elections: 78% of them for George Bush four years ago (Bush won majorities among all other religious voters too - all except Muslim Americans).

Those votes are up for grabs this year and Obama's message of hope may well resonate with them - whatever James Dobson says.