John C. Green, the guru of all things religiously political, or politically religious, or whatever, takes a comprehensive look at last year’s presidential campaign in First Things.

“Rarely have so many different religious voices been heard in a single presidential election,” Green writes, from gay rights activists to black preachers to Catholic bishops.

Green grants that the economy dominated the election, topping most voters’ lists of concerns and the candidate’s talking points in the home stretch. “Indeed, staples of the prior presidential election, such as the `God Gap’ and `values voters,’ largely disappeared from view,” he says.

So what does Obama’s winning coalition look like, and how does it differ from previous elections?

Green drops this nugget: “Taken together, the results of 2008 reveal little evidence of a fundamental shift in the structure of faith-based voting. Just two groups showed changes large enough to alter their relative order in the presidential vote: Ethnic Protestants (who switched from Republican to Democratic) and Traditionalist Catholics (who became more Democratic than the Centrist Catholics).”

While 39 percent of “Traditionalist Catholics” voted for Obama (Kerry got 22 percent of their vote in ’04), Thirty-four percent of “Centrist Catholics” voted for Obama, down from 41 percent for Kerry in ’04.

Green defines his categories thusly: “traditionalists (with the most traditional beliefs and practices), centrists (with moderate levels of traditional beliefs and practices), and modernists (with the least traditional beliefs and practices). These subdivisions are defined by basic beliefs, such as belief in a personal God, and practices, such as regular attendance at worship services.”