When Barack Obama’s presidential campaign contacted Ryan Culp last year to ask him to deliver a prayer at an Obama rally in Culp’s native Elkhart, Ind., the high school wellness teacher declined. "I’m a conservative Republican," Culp, who met his wife and raised his two kids in the same evangelical church in which he was brought up, said in a phone interview. "I didn’t want to be perceived to be a supporter of a Democratic campaign."
Earlier this month, though, when the White House phoned Culp to say that President Obama was returning to Elkhart—this time for a nationally televised town hall meeting to sell his economic stimulus plan—and asked him to open the event with a prayer, he agreed. "It was an opportunity to say that we’re not Democrats or Republicans," said Culp, 36, "but Americans searching for an answer."