New York Times bestselling author Don Miller is the latest nationally known evangelical Christian to head into what is considered by many the heart of conservative evangelism — Colorado Springs — to deliver the message that Christians should expand their focus beyond hot-button social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Miller, the author of “Blue Like Jazz” and who delivered the benediction at the Democratic National Convention in August, is speaking at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs tonight. In an interview today with the Colorado Independent, he said that his appearance in Colorado Springs is designed to help convince evangelicals that Barack Obama, who has spoken extensively of the role of faith in public life, is “probably the most evangelical candidate of all the candidates.”

“One of the reasons we’re here in Colorado is that it is up for grabs and the opportunity arose,” Miller said. “We have no desire to go into the heart of the evangelical movement and dismantle it, but here’s the message: A lot of people don’t know that the culture war is a cultural Vietnam, and we’re at an impasse. This is a chance for us, and a lot of evangelicals are finding themselves endeared to Barack Obama.”

As an evangelical stump-man for the Democratic candidate, however, Miller knows the odds are challenging at best. Citing current polls, he says only 15 percent of the most conservative evangelical people of faith plan to vote for Obama.

Miller’s visit to Colorado’s second largest city, which is home to national and international headquarters of dozens of high profile Christian nonprofits, follows an appearances last week by Richard Cizik, the vice president for governmental affairs of the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals.

Cizik is the nation’s leading high-profile evangelical promoting the need for Christians to address climate change and protect God’s planet — and he has withstood hardball efforts from old-style evangelicals like Springs-based Focus on the Family CEO James Dobson to get him fired. Dobson, along with others, would prefer Christian evangelicals focus on social issues like abortion and same sex marriage.

In an interview with the Colorado Independent, after two public appearances in the Springs, Cizik took issue with Republican John McCain, terming the Republican as unprincipled for backing away from former positions articulating the need to address climate change, as well as torture and a sensible tax policy — and in effect, becoming more like George Bush than the John McCain of the past. Despite his condemnation of McCain’s positions, however, Cizik stopped short of saying he plans to vote for Obama.

Miller, who says he does not know Cizik, also underscored his desire that Christian evangelicals move beyond the divisive issues of abortion and gay marriage — which many of the younger generation have already done.

“Certainly many more evangelicals, and younger evangelicals, are figuring out that globalization and trade are incredibly important — responsible fatherhood is incredibly important,” Miller said. In addition, he termed the current administration’s accounting practices “unbiblical.”

“Our taxes have gone up and we have a 40 percent larger government … we can no longer say as evangelicals we have one party,” he said.

For more on evangelical Christian leaders on the intersection of politics, faith and the 2008 presidential campaigns, read Evangelical leader smacks McCain for lack of principle.

It was thus largely under the radar that, in 1996 every hopeful Republican candidate for president traveled to Colorado Springs — home to Dobson’s Focus on the Family, to kiss the ministry and media empire founder’s ring and seek his blessing. Former Kansas Senator Bob Dole, who eventually won the Republican nomination, even went to church with Dobson one spring Sunday morning, at First Presbyterian in downtown Colorado Springs.

But in the summer of 1996, at the Republican National Convention in San Diego, Dole did – at least in Dobson’s mind – the unthinkable. The GOP platform included a stance calling for abortion to be outlawed and included wording that could easily be translated to supporting the position that physicians could face criminal charges and jail time for performing abortions. 

Dole, along with many other mainstream Republicans, publicly claimed they hadn’t actually read the platform adopted by their own party. And guess who lost?

In 1998, in a speech before the conservative and ultra-secretive Council for National Policy, Dobson recalled the events of two years earlier. The long speech was later republished with permission by the Scott Wilder Show, a syndicated Christian radio program, during which Dobson recounted the “insult” of Dole.

In his speech, Dobson also hit on a very interesting statistic. In 1994, he claimed that 43 percent of the voters who turned out to put Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America on the map identified themselves as “conservative, evangelical, and pro-life.

Two years later, Dobson claimed, turnout for those self-described evangelical and pro-life voters had dropped to 29 percent in the 1996 presidential election.

“That 14 percent right there represented the difference between winning and losing in that election,” Dobson said. “Where’d they go?”

“Republicans said, `Now they don’t have any place to go. Where are they going to go?’ Well, some of them did go. Some of them voted for Bill Clinton, and some of them stayed home, and some of them, like myself, voted for another candidate. I voted for Howard Phillips, (applause) not because I was convinced Howard would make a great president. I don’t know that. I voted for him because he stands for the principles and the values that I believe in, and nobody else did.

By the way, Phillips was the chosen candidate for president in 1992 and 1996 of the U.S. Taxpayer Party, which is now the Constitution Party (for which he also was the nominee in 2000).

As he has been since 1974, Phillips is currently the chairman of The Conservative Caucus, which calls itself a non-partisan, nationwide grass-roots public policy advocacy group.

Click here for a related story about presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, the winner of a recent straw poll of so-called “values voters.”

Cara DeGette is a senior fellow at Colorado Confidential and a columnist and contributing editor at the Colorado Springs Independent. E-mail her at cdegette@coloradoconfidential.com