Ties tighten between religion and politics

But there are also deep concerns on both sides of the church/state divide that that such ties can bind. And faith groups are recalibrating how close those ties should be.

At a closed-door retreat in Denver, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released details of deliberations over whether to penalize lawmakers who "cooperated with evil" by supporting abortion rights. "Disciplinary actions are permitted, but they should be applied when efforts at dialogue, persuasion, and conversion have been fully exhausted," said Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the task force leader.

Denying communion to Catholic lawmakers who do not vote in line with the church on abortion could turn a sacrament into a "partisan political battleground.... It could be more difficult for faithful Catholics to serve in public life because they might be seen as not standing up for principle, but as under pressure from the hierarchy," he said.

It's a threat that Catholic lawmakers take seriously. Two Senate Democrats matched the votes and actions of Catholic senators with USCCB positions on issues such as minimum wage, death penalty, and media ownership. The high scorer was Kerry, who has been targeted by some bishops as unfit for communion because of his votes on abortion.

At the same time, the National Association of Evangelicals is debating new draft guidelines advising members to "guard against over-identifying Christian social goals with a single political party, lest nonbelievers think that Christian faith is essentially political in nature," according to a report that first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Such debates come in a year when the electorate evenly divided, and both parties are looking to sympathetic churches to boost their appeal. Republicans are targeting large, white evangelical churches, and Democrats are appealing to black churches to energize their vote.

There's also renewed concern across the religious spectrum that ties between church and government can be too close, posing risks to both. This week, the Anti-Defamation League objected to a reference to America as "a Christian nation" in the new party platform of the Texas Republican Party.

The controversy suggests the fine line to be walked by those who say faith has a valid role to play in public life.

"We're seeing an unprecedented secularization of American life, in which some people seem to think that any issue that's connected in any way to a person's religion can't be discussed in public life," says Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama, who has been fighting losing battles for several of President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees. "But ... I don't think we're going to follow the European model on secularization."

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