Religion getting more politicized

WASHINGTON — If you are a Roman Catholic in some parts of the country, you are not supposed to vote for any politician, such as Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, a Catholic, who may personally oppose abortion but supports the legal right of a woman to have one.

If you're an evangelical Christian, you are very likely to sit in a pew on a Sunday sometime soon listening to a minister tell you that you should vote for President Bush, a born-again Methodist.

If you belong to a liberal Protestant denomination, you may hear an admonition from the pulpit that to vote for a president who authorized the war in Iraq and supports the death penalty would be to betray your moral conscience.

If you're an black pastor, expect Democrats to knock on your door, call on your phone, send you mail and e-mail you to seek your open support.

If you're a Muslim, the odds are you voted for Bush in 2000, but that you're less likely to vote for him this year because of his Middle East policies.

If you're Jewish, you may have voted for Al Gore in 2000, but this year you may be less certain you'll vote for the Democrat because Bush has been forging close ties with Israel.

Religion and politics have always been surreptitious bedfellows in America, and in some periods open cohorts. Remember the Moral Majority's avid backing of Ronald Reagan in 1980?

But this year the eagerness to politicize religion seems boundless.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a Catholic, was taken aback when Monsignor Kevin Vann, the pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in Springfield, Ill., told a newspaper that he would not want to give the senator Holy Communion because of his position upholding the law of the land on abortion rights. At least four bishops around the country have said they would deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights. One bishop in Colorado said voters who vote for such politicians shouldn't be permitted to take part in the Eucharist.

Durbin had his staff figure out a scorecard aimed at showing that Catholic Democratic senators vote more in alignment with the positions of U.S. Catholic bishops on a wide range of issues than many Catholic Republicans — except on abortion. The issues ranged from immigration (the bishops favor more open rules) to gun control (they're for more gun control) to media ownership (the bishops want diversity in TV and radio ownership) to the death penalty (they're opposed) to the war in Iraq (Pope John Paul II is against the war).