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TechnoratiRegardless of their political leanings, young evangelicals repeatedly mention the history Palin would write if elected the first female vice president. Obama's bid to become the country's first black president has struck a similar idealistic chord.
"For a lot of young evangelical women, it's exciting," said Colorado-based author Margaret Feinberg, an up-and-coming evangelical voice. "It speaks to young evangelical women who face a glass ceiling in our workplaces, but also the stained-glass ceiling of the church."
On the other side of the evangelical political spectrum, there's worry that Palin's star turn will diminish months of work Obama backers have put into wooing young evangelicals.
Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis, said young evangelicals in his circle fear that Palin's ascendancy signals a return to "old-school divide and conquer politics" and a narrow focus on abortion politics.
"There was a feeling that an era was coming to a close," said Pagitt, a leader in the emergent church, a diverse but hard-to-define movement that draws many young and creative evangelicals. "Now with a 44-year-old woman, there could be another half a lifetime of this."
Tony Jones, another emergent church leader, said it's too early to say that. "It's only been two weeks," he said.
"Although I think Palin will energize the conservative base, I don't think the Palin pick does anything for progressive evangelicals," said Jones, who caucused for Obama. "If anything, it tarnishes McCain's once stellar reputation as an independent-minded politician."
Even pre-Palin, McCain campaign officials thought the 72-year-old Arizona senator would appeal to young evangelicals. Polls show white evangelicals under 30 are even more anti-abortion than their elders but also keenly interested in the environment and poverty.
McCain "cares about life, he cares about marriage," said Marlys Popma, the campaign's evangelical outreach director. "But he also feels the same way they do about creation care, about global poverty, that if we truly are a Judeo-Christian nation we have a responsibility."
Popma said the campaign began a young evangelical task force that includes Stephanie Vogelzang, a 23-year-old Yale Divinity School student who approached the campaign to help. So far, Vogelzang said she's blogged and spoken at forums at Yale about the GOP ticket.
Jonathan Merritt said he contacted the McCain campaign before the Republican convention and offered to arrange a "star-studded" conference call with 35 young evangelicals. But Merritt, a 26-year-old Southern Baptist pastor active on environmental issues, said he got no response.
"The McCain campaign is really out to lunch when it comes to reaching young evangelicals," said Merritt, who added that Palin's questioning of man-made global warming concerns him.
Overall, the Palin pick is swaying many undecided young evangelicals who already were warming to McCain after his confident, straightforward answers at a recent candidate forum at Saddleback church in California, said Gabe Lyons. Lyons is a Georgia-based author and founder of the Fermi Project, a collective of church leaders, entrepreneurs and artists.
Young evangelicals "aren't identifying as much with Palin's evangelicalism as with her emblematic role as everyday American — one of us, a normal, down to earth mom, parent, school volunteer," Lyons said. "This isn't a faith response, it's a human response."
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