Are Democrats closing the “God gap”—the advantage that the GOP has had with religious voters in recent election cycles? One could argue that the gap was the difference that put George W. Bush into office twice in the very narrowly contested presidential elections of 2000 and 2004.

Amy Sullivan, a religion reporter for Time magazine, suggests that the Democrats’ apathy toward people of faith has cost them badly at the ballot box, and she’s got the evidence to prove it. Sullivan spoke on the issue during one of the first events of this year’s Fall for the Book, a weeklong book festival held in and around Fairfax, Va. Sullivan drew from her recently published book, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap” in painting a picture of a political revival among traditional Democrats.

Sullivan is refreshingly open about her own upbringing and how it informs her view of the relationship between faith and politics. Raised in a Midwestern home where a portrait of Jesus hung alongside a portrait of Bobby Kennedy, Sullivan accepted as gospel that the Democrats were the party of the poor and downtrodden, but when she came east and entered the political arena (she worked for Sen. Tom Daschle), she learned that her colleagues viewed anyone who claimed to be evangelical (Sullivan, raised a Baptist, did) as secretly conservative.

During her talk, Sullivan offered a four-point explanation of what constitutes an evangelical:

1. They believe in the idea of spiritual conversion.

2. They stress the importance of the Bible as opposed to church teaching.

3. They have a personal relationship with God.

4. They see it as an imperative to share their faith.

“Note that there is no requirement to vote Republican,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan then offered a brief history of how evangelicals became an important voting bloc, tracing their emergence as a political force to the Watergate scandal, which she said was not a failure of policy, but a moral and ethical failure. Just as important as the rise of evangelicals was the reaction of liberals. They stopped talking about their faith because they didn’t want to be thought of as conservatives, Sullivan contended. Democrats also “started to talk about issues, not values,” to their detriment at the ballot box.

This tactic of ignoring or hiding from religious voters hurt Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for president in 1988, who rejected all offers to speak to Catholics for fear that abortion would haunt any outreach effort to that large group of voters. In 2004, the John Kerry campaign hired just one person to handle religious outreach, and found itself overwhelmed when reporters began to dog the campaign over the issue of whether or not Kerry, a pro-choice Catholic, would be able to take communion. (Sullivan said this became known to reporters who followed Kerry’s campaign as “the wafer watch.”)

Just as bungled was how the campaign handled the issue of John Edwards’ faith. The vice-presidential nominee carried with him a well-worn leatherbound copy of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life” but the campaign made sure voters remained unaware of that. Meanwhile, when the chairman of the Democratic party met Warren, he extended his hand and asked the megachurch pastor, “What do you do?”

A third story involves a family of pro-life Democrats who traveled to a Kerry rally with handmade signs reading “Pro Life for Kerry.” When the campaign saw the signs, they asked that the family not display them.

It wasn’t until 9 days before the election that Kerry gave a speech on faith and values, but fearing a possible negative reaction among Catholics, the Kerry campaign had the candidate give the speech at a Jewish senior center.

As the 2008 presidential election campaign drew near, Democrats recognized an “unlevel praying field” and took action, Sullivan says. The party’s outreach to Catholic Democrats has already paid off in Michigan, where the state’s Democratic governor was re-elected with nearly 50% of the evangelical vote. The national Democratic party, in response to overtures from Catholics to downplay its past zeal for abortion rights, also has begun to talk more openly about its goal to reduce the number of abortions.

Evangelicals are changing, too. Rick Warren has helped push evangelicals to expand the issues that they care about most deeply, adding global poverty and AIDS to issues such as gay marriage and abortion. The result, according to Sullivan, has been a “seachange” especially among younger evangelicals, who Sullivan says view John McCain as tied to the politics of the past.

McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate addressed the concerns of many evangelical voters, but Sullivan remains skeptical that the choice of Palin will lead to victory, citing a Newsweek poll that puts McCain’s support at the same level after his choice of Palin as it was for the two months preceding that choice.

But Sullivan admits that she’s been wrong—very wrong—in some of her past political predictions.

Conservative Christian readers may see Sullivan as one more example of mainstream media bias that favors liberal candidates, but the shift Sullivan chronicles in her book is very real. Younger evangelicals are moving away from “the old politics” and are embracing ideas that may make them less likely to vote as part of predicable bloc in the future. This movement has been evident in multiple polls, although one recent poll puts John McCain’s support among evangelicals just shy of where George W. Bush’s support was at the same time four years ago.

Politics aside, Sullivan said that it’s been an interesting 18 months since she began working for Time. Pestered by certain coworkers to join them for lunch, Sullivan has discovered that they, too, are Christians but that they are too fearful to talk about their faith in the workplace. “They come out of the closet to me,” Sullivan says with a smile. “I feel like I should start a support group.”