Posted by Mike Dorning at 7:00 am CDT.

This election, Democratic presidential candidates are getting religion. And their web sites are starting to show it.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Saturday became the first Democratic presidential candidate to unveil a web site devoted to religious outreach. It includes a description of Obama's faith principles and testimonials from religious leaders, including his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright who says he supports Obama because "of his incarnated faith--his faith made alive in the flesh."

Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) today unveiled his own web site themed on faith and moral leadership.

A spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said her campaign will have its own faith-oriented web site up soon.

Posted by Frank James at 2:15 pm CDT

Religious liberals and Media Matters for America held a Washington press conference today to release a report archly called “Left Behind.” It wasn’t about Christians being raptured to heaven a la the fiction of the Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Instead, the report’s full name “Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media” pretty much gives away the report's bottom line – the news media generally ignore the progressive or liberal Christians and how their faith informs their politics.

The result is a warped view of such Christians are and their political choices, according to the report.

Posted by Frank James at 1:46 pm , updated 5:50 pm CDT

The death of Rev. Jerry Falwell, the 73-year old founder of the Moral Majority, a preacher who did more to bring fundamentalist Christians into the secular world of politics than perhaps any other modern religious leader, comes at a critical time for the Religious Right, whose political power was diminished when the Republican Party which relied heavily on its support lost control of Congress last year.

With President Bush, a self-proclaimed born-again believer, serving out the latter part of his time in office, and with no political heir apparent to inherit the support he received from conservative Christians, it's an open question who this important constituency in the Republican Party will coalesce around.

It would've been fascinating to see how Falwell would've navigated a Republican field including Sen. John McCain who in 2000 called him one of the "agents of intolerance" (they had since made attempt at mending things with McCain appearing at Liberty University, the school Falwell founded); Rudy Giuliani, who openly supports abortion rights, and Mitt Romney, the Mormon former governor of that bastion of secular humanism, Massachusetts. Indeed, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is scheduled to be the commencement speaker at Liberty's commencement this weekend.

Now we'll never know who he would've finally supported, assuming he would have supported any of the candidates at all.

Suffice it to say that rare are the people like Falwell in recent American history who have had so large an impact on the nation's political life without being politicians. Agree with him or not, he couldn't be ignored.

Incidentally, McCain's office has issued a statement, followed quickly by Romney, and then this evening by President Bush:

Posted by Mike Dorning at 11:25 am CDT.

Democratic presidential candidate has been criticized by a Jewish group for a fundraiser scheduled this Saturday at the home of retired New York Knicks player Allan Houston, who made comments in 2001 that some considered anti-Semitic.

The New York Magazine blog reports the $1,000-a-head event is drawing heavy criticism from the American Jewish Congress, an anti-discrimination and pro-Israel group.

Houston and fellow Knicks guard Charlie Ward, both deeply religious Christians who were nicknamed the "God Squad," stirred controversy after making comments that indicated Jews were responsible for killing Christ.

Posted by Mike Dorning at 7:00 am CDT.

The Democratic primary campaign this year will now include early question-and-answer sessions on the leading candidates' faith and moral values.

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards all are scheduled to appear at a forum on faith and social justice planned for Monday June 4 by Sojourners/Call to Renewal, a progressive evangelical group that concentrates on anti-poverty issues, according to the group.

The forum will be part of the group's annual anti-poverty conference, Pentecost 2007. Despite the name, the conference actually falls a week after the Christian holy day marking the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles fifty days after Easter.

Posted by Karoun Demirjian at 11:33 am CDT

The producers of a film about the struggle for Islam’s identity in the West are launching a public campaign against PBS to get their product shown.

The hour-long documentary, “Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center”, is one of 22 documentaries funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for PBS’s America at a Crossroads series, an initiative to examine post-September 11 subjects like terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the experience of American troops overseas, and global perspectives on U.S. foreign policy.

It follows the efforts of socially liberal Muslims in America and Europe to reclaim their religion from political extremism by speaking out against ultra-conservative imams, in a sort of modern-day Muslim Reformation.

Posted by Frank James at 1:20 pm CDT

How does a congressional leader locked in a difficult political battle with a determined president try to gain the upper hand? If you’re Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), you summon up the pope, as in Pope Benedict XVI.

At his Capitol Hill press conference today, Reid referred to the pope no less than five times to buttress the congressional Democrats’ argument that the U.S. wind down its military efforts in Iraq.

Reid said:

As the pope said on Easter Sunday, a slaughter is taking place in Iraq. The pope further said, "Nothing good is coming from Iraq."

Posted by Frank James at 3:36 pm CST

As it became clear that the U.S. had terribly miscalculated in invading Iraq and many critics looked to cast blame, fingers often pointed at neoconservative intellectuals, many of Jewish ancestry who had argued forcefully for the war.

The allegation was that people either inside or close to the Bush administration like Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle had sought the war in part to make the Middle East safe for Israel.

As Francis Fukuyama, a disillusioned former neoconservative thinker said in his book “America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy” some of those charges bore the hallmarks of scapegoating.

“It is perhaps not surprising that some neoconservatives have charged in return that, in the mouths of their critics, neoconservative is a code word for Jewish, since the kind of takeover of the American body politic alleged is all too similar to the kinds of conspiracies laid at the feet of Jews in the history of anti-Semitism.”

Posted by William Neikirk at 11:55 p.m. CST

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) called on President Bush today to denounce a Virginia congressman who criticized a newly elected Muslim Democrat for wanting to bring the Koran to his swearing-in.

Rep. Virgil Goode, a Republican, set off a firestorm when he sent a letter to constituents lamenting the fact that Rep.-elect Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), scheduled to be the first Muslim congressman, would bring the Muslim holy book, and not the Bible, to ta private swearing-in ceremony.

Goode also said that immigration laws should be tightened to prevent more Muslims from coming to America and being elected to Congress. He refused to apologize.

Emanuel, who gave strong support to Ellison as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the mid-term elections, criticized Goode at a Chicago press conference on Thursday. He upped the ante today by calling for Bush to step in.

Posted by William Neikirk at 2 p.m. CST

At this time of year, the mail is usually so nice. Cards proclaim Merry Christmas or happy holidays and best wishes for the New Year. So much good cheer is spread around in this season it always makes one feel warm and fuzzy.

But there are exceptions, such as Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode's latest letter to his constituents. Tolerant, it was not.

Goode took note that the new Democratic congressman from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Muslim, said he would bring the Koran to his swearing in. "When I raise my hand to take the oath on swearing-in day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way," Goode wrote.

But he went one step further: "The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."