Obama's out reach to faith based supporters "ad hoc," no "clear sense of what the mission"

What strikes me when I read the Washington Post article was that Obama's religious supporters are academics.  I have meet a number of academics in religion programs and what has always stood out when I talked to them was that they were atheists.  I have no evidence that these academics are atheists, but I wouldn't be surprised that Obama had a lot of atheist academics in religion programs talking to him about what he needed to do to reach out to religious people.  I won't quote it hear, but the piece has numerous discussions about religious Democrats who were uncomfortable with Obama's support for homosexual marriage.  From the Washington Post:

. . . “I think there is a viable religious left who can be persuaded by a carefully articulated religious argument, but no one is making it,” said Valerie Cooper, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia and Obama supporter. “I’m concerned that the administration has not followed through on the promise of 2008.” . . .
“I get frustrated when I talk to evangelical friends or students and they ask, ‘How can you be a Christian and a Democrat?’” Cooper said.
David Kim, a Connecticut College religious studies professor, helped advise the 2008 campaign when videos of incendiary sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former Chicago pastor, threatened to derail the nominee. Kim, who attended the briefing with Cooper, described the administration’s faith-based work as “ad hoc” and “with no long-term strategy.”
“I didn’t really get a clear sense of what the mission is,” Kim said. . . .
According to exit polls, the effort paid off. Obama made gains over the 2004 nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, with voters who attend religious services more than once a week, 43 percent to 35 percent. Obama also won 26 percent of the evangelical vote, compared with 21 percent for Kerry.
“It wasn’t huge, but it was statistically significant,” said John Green, director of the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute for Applied Politics . . .
But from 2008 to 2010, when control of Congress was at stake, the DNC cut its faith outreach staffing from more than six people to one part-timer, according to The Washington Post. . . .

BTW, here is an add that the Obama campaign has in the NY Times on Sunday morning. What struck me as strange about the add was that the add looks like it was done by some LGBT group, not by the Obama administration.  At least having the add in the NY Times would minimize any collateral damage among religiously orientated individuals who are relatively unlikely to be reading that newspaper.