Anti-abortion activists rally against Sen. Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in August (Getty Images)

Salon’s Mike Madden visited the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs on Sunday and found the political energy muted. The evangelical Christians he spoke with were lukewarm on McCain (though excited about Sarah Palin) and appeared to be bracing for an Obama victory in the state and the nation. Unlike 4 and 8 years ago, when conservative Christians were seen as a crucial part of Bush’s winning coalition, in 2008 their influence is waning.

“Should places like Colorado, and Ohio, and North Carolina and Virginia — all states with more than their fair share of evangelical Christian conservatives — go blue on Tuesday, it will be a clear sign that the sun may be setting on the political influence of fundamentalist churches like New Life,” Madden writes.

Not only is the Illinois senator cruising to a victory in a state that hasn’t gone for a Democrat since Bill Clinton’s first term — and before that, not since LBJ in 1964 — but a state ballot proposition that should be chum in the water for anti-abortion conservative Christians is losing by a 2-to-1 ratio. Amendment 48 — or the “Personhood” amendment — would define “any human being from the moment of fertilization” as a person.

A mock letter from 2012 put out by Focus on the Family — the Colorado Springs-based Christian outfit headed by Dr. James Dobson whose sole purpose seems to be to stoke the culture wars — describes a world with gay marriage, on-demand abortion, strict gun control, Bush administration officials in jail for war crimes, and explicit sex on network TV all brought on by an Obama administration.

How did this happen, the letter asks and answers:

Christians share a lot of the blame. In 2008, many evangelicals thought Senator Obama was an opportunity for a “change,” and they voted for him… Christians did not realize that by electing Barack Obama — rated the most liberal U.S. senator in 2007 — they would allow the law, in the hands of a liberal Congress and Supreme Court, to become a great instrument of oppression. Many people thought he sounded so thoughtful, so reasonable. And during the campaign, after he had won the Democratic nomination, he seemed to be moving to the center in his speeches, moving away from his far-Left record… Christians didn’t take time to find out who Barack Obama was when they voted for him. Why did they risk our nation’s future on him? It was a mistake that changed the course of history.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver has passed out Focus on the Family’s voter guide, and Archbishop Charles Chaput has vocally opposed any candidate that he sees as pro-abortion and called Obama “the most pro-abortion politician to run for the presidency in 35 years, since Roe v. Wade. He has committed himself to do things the Catholic Church would resist.”

But just as all Evangelicals are not in lock step with their most vocal leaders, not all Catholics are falling in line. “I vehemently object to the notion that I’m not a good Catholic because I see things differently,” a 66-year-old Greenwood Village Catholic told the Denver Post.

The Mathew 25 Network, a pro-Obama Christian PAC, ran ads in Colorado arguing voters can be pro-life and pro-Obama. Among the group’s supporters is Douglas Kmiec, a noted Catholic legal scholar who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and dean of the Catholic University law school.

In arguing against the limus test on aborton set out by Chaput, Kmeic suggests Obama may be pro-choice, but his broader social agenda would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies more than oveturning Roe v. Wade:

Empirical study confirms abortion reduction through the Obama cultural and economic assistance course of action. Further, Obama’s center-piece commitment to improving the economic and health related conditions of the average family embraces (far more than McCain’s continuation of the trickle down policies of President Bush) the wider definition of ‘culture of life’ in the Church’s pastoral constitution. Given that, Obama presents both a proportionate reason to favor him (Obama’s policy saves at least some children as against saving none) and Obama quite simply presents the better alternative in terms of overall Catholic social teaching.

Looking at how cultural wedge issues, and abortion specifically, affect religious voters’ preferences, Newsweek online noted a recent study that found “70 percent of American Catholics say they are willing to oppose their bishops on abortion. But that doesn’t mean they will.”

This year, it appears that even religious voters are finding ways to escape cultural wedge issues — just look at the 600 Latter Day Saints who protested against California’s gay marriage ban in Salt Lake City — and support candidates or propositions that run against Christian sterotypes. Come Tuesday and in the following weeks and years, it’ll become clear where this apparent trend was real or not and whether it represented an aberrant moment in time or the start of a larger movement.