c. 2007 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Liza Kittle voted twice for Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but now the stay-at-home mom from Augusta, Ga., has no interest in another Clinton White House.

“Hillary Clinton just represents that ’70s sort of radical feminism that doesn’t speak to evangelical women,” said Kittle, 49, who says she began to lean Republican after a return to her Christian faith.

Kittle, a self-described former feminist, and women like her are a problem for Clinton’s presidential campaign. Evangelicals _ especially women _ find much to dislike, including her support of abortion rights, her takes-a-village approach to child rearing and her liberal politics. And among a community that decries divorce, they see raw political calculation in her decision to stick by her husband.

The animosity runs thick and deep, built up over years of suspicion, even as the campaign struggles to understand its intensity. But perhaps more worrisome than the deep-rooted skepticism is the fact that Clinton may be the one candidate who could unify dispirited evangelical voters _ against her.

All of which prompts the question: Where does the evangelical anti-Hillary hostility come from? Paul Kengor, author of “God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life,” has a few ideas:

_ Her failed health care reform, which many conservatives saw as a massive big-government power grab. “She is for universal health care, socialized medicine,” said Kittle, the mother of four. “My husband is a physician and I’m adamantly opposed to that.”

_ The 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, at which Mother Teresa condemned abortion to loud applause while the Clintons sat on their hands.

_ Her 1995 imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt, suggested by spiritual adviser Jean Houston and chronicled by journalist Bob Woodward.

_ Her 1998 charge that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was trying to sink her husband’s presidency.

Clinton’s campaign says she is simply misunderstood.

“As Hillary Clinton often says herself, she is probably the least well-known, well-known person in America,” said Burns Strider, who heads up faith-based operations for her campaign. “That is why we are actively reaching out to people of faith to join her campaign, including evangelical voters, so they know her story and are informed about her positions on the issues.”

In a bid to recast her image among skeptical fellow Christians, she has mused about “prayer warriors” in a forum hosted by Sojourners magazine and talked about “works without faith” at Rick Warren’s California megachurch.

The Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, the Clintons’ United Methodist pastor during the White House years, says the woman he knows does not match the public caricature.

“A number of times, I saw her interacting with people where there was no political gain to be had,” he said, “where she was sensitive and caring.”

But even as they acknowledge they really don’t know Clinton, about two-thirds of white evangelical voters reported unfavorable views in an August survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Clinton’s “very unfavorable” ratings actually outweighed her “mostly unfavorable” ratings, 36 percent to 29 percent.

Some have wondered if conservative Christians would be uneasy with a female commander-in-chief. The Southern Baptist Convention, after all, has declared that a wife should “submit herself graciously” to her husband, and many early evangelical warriors cut their political teeth in the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment.

But Texas author and professor Dorothy Patterson says there’s a difference between voting for a woman and voting for this woman. Many evangelicals, she said, would feel perfectly comfortable with, say, Margaret Thatcher in the White House.

“I just do not think that she espouses the values that are important to me,” said Patterson, whose husband, Paige Patterson, is president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. “I do not think she has the character that I would want to see in a woman.”

Patterson and others, including Tamara Scott, an independent political consultant in Ankeny, Iowa, said Clinton’s mantra _ “It takes a village to raise a child” _ shows that “she’s very anti-family.”

“For most Christian parents, we understand parents are the God-given authority, and we’re not willing to hand our children over to the village to be raised,” Scott said. “It’s, in fact, the village I’m protecting my children from.”

The ironies can be striking. Both Clinton and her opponents speak openly about the central role of Christian faith in their lives. But evangelicals are deeply skeptical of her reasons for remaining married to the former president.

“I appreciate the fact that she’s stuck by her man,” said Sidonie Graves, a member of the Republican Central Committee of Buchanan County, Iowa.

“But … I think she also knew that if she didn’t stick with him, that there was no hope for her political future.”

Adds Kitty Rehberg, president of Iowa Eagle Forum: “We know where she wanted to go in her life and what power she wanted to have. … I’m very skeptical on whether this is a true marriage.”

Though opponents cite Clinton’s personal or political decisions, it’s a subject that is both political and personal _ deeply so, for many evangelicals _ that raises their hackles most: abortion.

“For her, abortion is the elephant in the living room,” said Kengor, a Roman Catholic, who said every Christian radio talk-show host who asks him about Clinton brings it up. “A lot of them, these hosts, outright question her Christian faith because of her stridency on abortion.”

Some Christians will acknowledge that Clinton is a believer (she’s a lifelong United Methodist) and some will even grant her the label “Christian.” Yet her Sunday school upbringing, her Methodist youth group and her Capitol Hill Bible studies still leave them wanting.

“People vote who they trust,” said Janice Shaw Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute of the Washington-based Concerned Women for America, “and I think the biggest factor that Hillary will have to overcome is that trust factor, because so many people are suspicious of her motives.”

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To be sure, the hostility is not shared by all evangelicals. J. Lee Grady, editor of the charismatic and Pentecostal magazine Charisma, said some black Pentecostals support Clinton, as they did her husband. But he has yet to meet a single white evangelical woman who does.

“The overwhelming majority of white charismatic Christians, they are praying that Hillary Clinton will lose,” Grady said. “They view Hillary Clinton as the worst-case scenario for America.”

Bishop Noel Jones, a black Pentecostal pastor in Gardena, Calif., who recently attended a Clinton fundraiser, said he’s irritated by the judgments of fellow Christians against Clinton.

“What bothers me is judgment without evidence,” he said. “Speculation without facts. … I can’t say whether they’re right or wrong, but I would give her the benefit of the doubt, particularly from a Christian point of view because the Bible says love `thinketh no evil.”’

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