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.

"The days after that, when I was trying to survive and Elizabeth was trying to survive, my faith came roaring back and has stayed with me since that time and helped me deal with the personal challenges we have," Edwards said in an interview with Beliefnet, a spiritual Web site, this year. "Not only the death of my son, but some of the politics and the difficulty of that on our family. Elizabeth's breast cancer. All the things that we've seen, which is not that unusual for families."

They joined Edenton Street United Methodist Church, the downtown Raleigh church that Wade had attended. Edwards became active on the church's administrative board and attended Sunday school, said the Rev. Roger Elliot, the church's senior pastor.

At the invitation of Joe Knott, a conservative Republican lawyer and law school classmate, Edwards started attending Bible study fellowship classes every Monday night at St. Mark's United Methodist Church in suburban North Raleigh.

More openly religious

Edwards did not emphasize his religious reawakening during his 1998 Senate campaign, although other North Carolina Senate candidates, such as Jesse Helms and Elizabeth Dole, both Republicans, often discussed their faith on the campaign trail.

But when he went to the Senate, Edwards was more open about his religious views, becoming co-chairman of the Senate prayer breakfast.

In Washington, the Edwardses were members of the Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church. Since moving to Chapel Hill more than a year ago, they have not joined a church but have been trying out several, according to the Edwards campaign.

In his presidential campaign, Edwards has a staffer responsible for outreach to church groups. His campaign manager, former U.S. Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, is a pro-life former Catholic seminarian who is well-connected in liberal religious circles.

Edwards has wrapped a religious cloak around his effort to focus on the problems of the poor, health care and the environment.

"I think Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," Edwards said to Beliefnet. "I think he would be appalled, actually."

A poll taken for Time magazine found that 22 percent viewed Edwards as strongly religious compared with 24 percent for Obama, 15 percent for Clinton, 26 percent for former Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, 15 percent for Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain and 13 percent for former Republican New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Critics on right, left

Although Edwards has been reaching out to spiritual voters, things have not always gone smoothly.

Edwards was criticized by conservatives in February when he declined to fire two campaign bloggers -- Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen -- whose writings before they joined his campaign had offended some. Catholic League President William Donohue called them "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots."

Edwards said he found their writings offensive but decided to give the two women another chance. Shortly thereafter, they resigned.

A spokeswoman for the Catholic League, a New York-based anti-defamation group that is nonpartisan but leans Republican, found Edwards' response "troubling."

"It certainly doesn't show a respect for Catholics that he would show toward any other group," said Kiera McCaffrey, a Catholic League spokeswoman.

Nor has Edwards won over conservative Christian evangelicals. His record in support of abortion rights and gay rights -- he supports civil unions but opposes same-sex marriages -- makes him unacceptable to some on the religious right. After analyzing Edwards' record and statements, Faith and Action, a conservative Washington-based Christian group, concluded on its Web site that Edwards might have been sustained by his faith but he was not "an Evangelical nor any kind of traditionalist."

Edwards has also taken flak from the other side.

At the CNN/YouTube debate last week in Charleston, a North Carolina pastor asked Edwards whether it was right to cite his Southern Baptist upbringing as a reason to oppose same-sex marriage.

"Why is it still acceptable to use religion to deny gay Americans their full and equal rights?" asked the Rev. Reggie Longcrier, pastor of the Exodus Mission and Outreach Church in Hickory.

Edwards said he was conflicted on the issue and that his wife Elizabeth supports same-sex marriages.

"The honest answer is that I don't," Edwards said when asked whether he supported same-sex marriage. "But I think it is absolutely wrong, as president of the United States, for me to have used that faith as a basis for denying anybody their rights, and I will not do that when I'm president of the United States."