Politics, religion following same split

WASHINGTON — Across the country this week, tens of millions of Americans have been signaling how they'll vote for president this fall.

They're doing it not by tuning in to campaign commercials, contributing to one of the candidates or registering at a polling place. Rather, they're making their political statement by attending religious services or celebrating Passover — or by ignoring the religious holidays.

The religion gap is fast becoming the country's widest political division. Those who regularly attend religious services vote Republican by a margin of 2-1, and those who don't vote Democratic by the same margin.

This growing gap helps explain why the country is so divided politically. Born in the culture wars of the 1960s — over abortion, prayer in public schools and women's rights — and deepened by competing visions of morality, it's being reinforced this year by new fights over gay marriage and the Pledge of Allegiance.

The result is a values gulf dividing the nation that will make it difficult for Republican President Bush or Democratic Sen. John Kerry to build a majority. More than that, the gap makes it hard for even a winning president to command legitimacy. Each side can barely abide the other's leaders, seeing them not only as wrong on issues but also as evil people, unworthy of governing. President Bill Clinton was loathed by one side as immoral; Bush is detested by the other as intolerant, unthinking and indifferent to the poor.

"The division is growing wider in American politics. It's almost as if the two sides live in parallel universes," said John Kenneth White, a political scientist at Catholic University in Washington and author of "The Values Divide."

"It makes it difficult to assemble a broad agenda that will break that division and allow one party or candidate to reach out across the divide," White said. The gap is widest between those who attend religious services more than once a week and those who seldom or never set foot in a house of worship. It's narrower between those who attend weekly versus those who attend once or twice a year. And it all but disappears among those who attend once or twice a month, according to many polls.

The two major presidential campaigns approach the divide differently.

Bush is a Methodist who regularly and publicly attends church. He calls Jesus Christ the most influential philosopher in his life. He invokes his faith when making policy decisions, from limits on abortion and stem-cell research to war. Most notably, he casts the war on terrorism as a struggle between good and evil.