MEMPHIS, TENN. - The choir of the First Baptist Church had just finished swaying, clapping and singing gospel and praise music when John Edwards took the stage.

"The Lord was in your voices, and we could feel it," Edwards said, sounding more like a preacher than a Democratic presidential candidate.

Democrats have long talked about spirituality in African-American churches. But the crowd of 300 packed into a secondhand store run by the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association building this month was largely white.

And Edwards, like the other major Democratic presidential candidates, is talking more about spirituality than in the past. He and other Democrats have been trying to improve their standing among religious voters after more than a decade in which polls have shown that regular churchgoers have tended to vote Republican.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has been a leader in the effort to get Democrats re-engaged with religious voters, but New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, have followed suit. Last month, the three addressed progressive evangelical Christians in Washington at a conference called Pentecost 2007.

The Democrats' quest for religious voters was underscored by a Time magazine cover story last week that featured an illustration of Obama, Clinton and Edwards in a stained glass window with their hands folded in prayer.

"There is more God talk among Democrats than Republicans," said Mark Silk, an expert on politics and religion at Trinity College in Connecticut. "I think that says something pretty important.

"The [Democratic] front-runners sense that there is an appetite among moderates for a kind of religion that is different from the religious right," Silk said. "You can talk about a range of issues in moral and religious terms that make sense to people, including health care, social justice and the environment."

But faith and politics can be perilous territory, and Edwards has faced scrutiny from both the political left and the right.

During a nationally televised debate last week, Edwards seemed to struggle with a question about whether his Southern Baptist upbringing unduly influenced his opposition to same-sex marriages. Earlier this year, he was criticized by traditionalists for not firing two campaign bloggers for their anti-Catholic writings.

Faith reawakened

Edwards has had his own bumpy spiritual journey. He was reared as a small-town Baptist but strayed from the church as a young man, only to regain his faith in middle age after his 16-year old son, Wade, was killed in an automobile accident.

Having grown up in Bible Belt mill towns, Edwards is no stranger to religion. His father, Wallace Edwards, is a longtime deacon in First Baptist Church in Robbins. Edwards returned to the Moore County town this year when his dad received the Lay Person of the Year award. Edwards was baptized at the church and was involved in its youth activities.

"He was a fine young man," recalled the Rev. Gene Booker, who was Edwards' pastor growing up. "His parents were very active in the church. They are very fine Christian people."

But Edwards drifted from the church after going to college. He became a Methodist but attended church irregularly and said religion was not central to his life.

"I strayed away from the Lord for a period of time," Edwards said at Pentecost 2007.

The death of his son, Wade, in 1996 changed the trajectory of Edwards' life -- moving from the law to politics, having more children in middle age and finding spirituality. John and his wife, Elizabeth, have described the almost paralyzing grief after their son's death and how religion was a solace.

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