WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious Democrats had been “hibernating” until the 2008 elections, when the party’s candidates-including President-elect Barack Obama-made religion central to their campaigns, former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Monday (Jan. 19).

And now Obama must continue his outreach to people of faith if he is to end the Iraq War, reduce the number of abortions, and halt climate change, among other difficult issues, said McCurry, former President Clinton’s chief spokesman from 1995-98.

“Yes, (part of) that effort will be a response mechanism to the religious right,” McCurry said during a talk at a downtown United Methodist church. “But it’s short-sighted if it’s only that. It will miss the opportunity … to mobilize people across the theological and religious spectrum to tackle problems.”

The brief talk by the former White House spokesman, who is an active United Methodist, was part of a four-day event called “Be the Change” tied to the inauguration and hosted by Washington-area United Methodist congregations. Other Methodist churches held social justice workshops, public prayer services and inauguration viewings.

McCurry, now working at a Washington communications consulting firm, has long challenged fellow Democrats to connect with voters by discussing their faith.

McCurry said “faith and politics have been intertwined in our DNA as a country for a long, long time. It’s part of who we are as a people.”

But after reading a selection from the Rev. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” McCurry said religious progressives had failed to take up the torch.

“When we were in Berkeley (California), we were getting high on a lot of stuff, but we were not `God-intoxicated,”‘ McCurry said, quoting King’s letter.

The Clinton White House was filled with religious people, including Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s incoming chief of staff, who hosted weekly visits from his rabbi to study the Torah, and George Stephanopoulos, the son of an Orthodox priest. Yet there was little talk about how faith impacted policy, McCurry said,

“There was no community in the White House in the 1990s where we could go and share our faith,” said the former chief spokesman.

McCurry said his church community in suburban Maryland provided “sanctuary from the storm” during a particularly rough period when Congress voted to impeach Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice.

“Without that community, I would not have been able to stay for four years as press secretary,” McCurry said.