“What Americans would have found absolutely intolerable only a few years ago, a majority now not only tolerates but celebrates,” proclaimed Paul M. Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation.

Then came the statement that set pundits to chattering for weeks.

“I no longer believe that there is a moral majority,” proclaimed Weyrich, in a 1999 epistle that made many liberals cheer and some conservatives grumble.

It helps to understand that Weyrich — who died shortly before Christmas — was the strategist who coined the “moral majority” label for the Rev. Jerry Falwell and his new grassroots network. Weyrich urged conservative intellectuals and donors to build think tanks, political-action committees and lobbying groups — mirroring strategies on the left. Above all, he helped lead efforts to convince conservative Catholics, Protestants and Jews that, when it came to issues of faith and family, they could find unity in their shared cultural values.

For many activists, noted direct-mail pioneer Richard A. Viguerie, this legacy is enough to put him on the right’s “version of Mount Rushmore” with William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

But for others — Sen. John McCain leaps to mind — this same Weyrich was a narrow true believer who was a faithful Catholic conservative, first, and a loyal Republican, way, way, second.

Weyrich knew that his famous 1999 epistle on politics and culture was a turning point. After all, the founder of the Heritage Foundation was arguing that America’s cultural heritage was cracked. The leader of the Free Congress Foundation was saying that a GOP-driven Congress was failing, on cultural issues.

For many years, he argued, conservatives assumed that most Americans agreed with them on moral and cultural issues. They also believed that “if we could just elect enough conservatives, we could get our people in as Congressional leaders and they would fight to implement our agenda.” But this equation didn’t work.

“The reason, I think, is that politics itself has failed. And politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture,” he argued. “The culture we are living in becomes an ever-wider sewer. In truth, I think we are caught up in a cultural collapse of historic proportions, a collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.”

In an interview months after issuing that letter, Weyrich explained that two radically different groups of politicos — with sharply different motives — misinterpreted his main message.

On the political left, many said he had issued a ringing call for religious conservatives to go back to church and stay there. On the political right, many of his friends and allies were angry and felt betrayed for the same reason. Apparently, they read right past his statement: “Please understand that I am not quarreling with anybody who pursues politics, because it is important to pursue politics, to be involved in government.”

The key, said Weyrich, was that he had become convinced that many conservatives couldn’t see that it is almost impossible to pass legislation that produces change at the level of homes, churches, schools, theaters and malls. It is almost impossible for politics to shape or redeem culture. Instead, the realities of media, education and mass culture are what shape — over time — America’s political trends.

The political strategist knew that “values voters” in red zip codes would continue to win some battles in the years ahead. But the political victories that would matter the most, he said, would be the defensive moves that protected their own churches, schools, missions and other religious groups from future legal attacks.

Weyrich never urged anyone to quit. But the former journalist did warn religious leaders that it was time to focus on winning the “culture wars” in their own homes and sanctuaries.

“We probably have lost the culture war,” he concluded, in the 1999 letter. “That doesn’t mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn’t going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important. …

“We need to drop out of this culture, and find places … where we can live godly, righteous and sober lives.”

The odds were also good that the Religion Newswriters Association would pick the White House race as its top news story. But there was a problem. There were so many faith-based issues in play during this election year that America’s religion-beat specialists had trouble deciding which of these hot stories was No. 1.

In the end, this was the winning item: “Controversial sermons delivered in recent years by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surface, resulting in pressure on Barack Obama, who eventually withdraws his membership in his church, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. Meanwhile, John McCain rejects the endorsements of evangelists John Hagee, a critic of Catholicism, and Rod Parsley.”

However, it’s important to note that this RNA poll was held before two other stories broke, each demonstrating why it will be hard for the Obama administration to find middle ground in America’s wars over religion and public life.

The first was the resignation of the National Association of Evangelicals official Richard Cizik, who drew fire when he endorsed civil unions for gays and lesbians and hinted that he was willing to compromise on gay marriage, as well. In an interview with National Public Radio, the veteran lobbyist said: “I’m shifting, I have to admit. I would willingly say I believe in civil unions. I don’t officially support redefining traditional marriage, I don’t think.”

In the end, it was impossible for the association’s leaders to ignore those crucial words, “I don’t think.”

Then, soon after that controversy, Obama was criticized by leaders on the secular and religious left for selecting another high-profile evangelical to give the invocation at his inauguration.

The Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church had also made cautious statements suggesting a willingness to compromise on civil unions. However, Warren drew fierce attacks from gay-rights supporters due to his strong support for California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which defined marriage as the union of husband and wife.

The rest of the RNA top 10 looked like this:

(2) Led by Obama’s example, Democrats reach out to religious voters. At a crucial stage of the campaign, Obama participates in a debate with John McCain moderated by Warren and held in his megachurch sanctuary. Conservative Christians are given a few moments in the Democratic National Convention spotlight.

(3) The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as the GOP vice presidential nominee energizes evangelical activists, who are excited by her defense of unborn children — both in her personal life and in public policies. Many religious conservatives reluctantly back McCain.

(4) The California Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, but voters in November — including a large majority of African-Americans — approve a constitutional amendment enforcing a traditional definition of marriage. Gay marriage also fails at the polls in Arizona and Florida.

(5) Pope Benedict XVI makes his first U.S. visit, drawing massive crowds in Washington and New York. The pope also meets with a few Catholics who had been sexually abused by clergy and openly addresses their concerns from the pulpit.

(6) Backed by Anglican traditionalists in Africa, Asia and Latin America, conservatives alienated from the U.S. Episcopal Church appeal to the Anglican Communion to create a parallel jurisdiction — the Anglican Church in North America. This open split follows decades of doctrinal fighting in the Episcopal Church, including the consecration of a noncelibate gay priest as a bishop five years ago.

(7) India is rocked by terrorist attacks, including a three-day siege in Mumbai that results in the deaths of almost 200, including an American rabbi and his wife at an Orthodox Jewish center. Authorities pursue links to radical Islamists in Pakistan. Meanwhile, fatal attacks on Christians in the eastern state of Orissa continue during 2008.

(8) The Chinese government makes strategic moves to suppress Buddhists seeking Tibetan independence in an attempt to stage peaceful Olympics games. Still, some demonstrations mar rites to pass the Olympic torch.

(9) Religious groups are hit by effects of a struggling economy and begin to face declines in offerings, forcing many to cut staff and expenses while the need for social services increases nationwide.

(10) Chaledean Archbishop Paulos Rahho is kidnapped and murdered in Mosul, Iraq. Meanwhile, Sunni and Shiite Muslim groups continue to trade attacks. Reports of stability increase toward the end the year, including the return of some persecuted Christians to their homes.

No, honest, as in “the 12 days of” you know what between Dec. 25 and Jan. 5.

If you doubt the accuracy of this statement, you can head over to the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. There you will find an interactive calendar that bravely documents the fact that, according to centuries of Christian tradition, the quiet season called Advent has just ended and the 12-day Christmas season has just begun.

So cease stripping the decorations off your tree and postpone its premature trip to the curb. There is still time to prepare for a Twelfth Night party and then the grand finale on Jan. 6, when the feast of the Epiphany marks the arrival in Bethlehem of the magi.

“You would be amazed how hard it was to find information on the World Wide Web about all of this,” lamented Joe Larson, the USCCB’s director of digital media. “We wanted to link to sites that would help tell Catholics what we believe about these seasons and why we do what we do — or what we are supposed to do — during Advent and Christmas. …

“What we ended up with is definitely not a finished product, but we’ll expand it in the future. We got the ball rolling this year.”

The materials gathered at www.usccb.org/advent do not, at first glance, appear to be all that rebellious.

The website contains pull-down menus providing scriptures, prayers, meditations and biographies of the saints whose feasts are celebrated during these seasons. Note that the feast of St. Nicholas of Myra — yes, that St. Nicholas — was back on Dec. 6. Another page suggests family movies for the seasons, some obvious (think “The Nativity Story”) and some not so obvious (think “Ernest Saves Christmas”).

The Christmas season has always been complicated. Many early Christians celebrated the birthday of Jesus on May 20, while others used dates in April and March. Most early believers, however, emphasized the Jan. 6 feast of the Epiphany.

Then, sometime before 354, Christians in Rome began celebrating the Feast of the Nativity on Dec. 25, which created tension with the Eastern churches that were using different dates. Then, in 567, the Second Council of Tours established Dec. 25 as the nativity date, Jan. 6 as Epiphany and the 12 days in between as the Christmas season — the liturgical calendar’s biggest party.

The problem, of course, is that Advent now clashes with the 30-something or 40-something days of the secular season — called “The Holidays” — that begins with the shopping mall rituals of Thanksgiving weekend. For most Americans, Christmas Day is the end of “The Holidays,” even though it is the beginning of the real Christmas season.

While many Christians still observe Advent — especially Anglicans, Lutherans and other mainline Protestants — some older Roman Catholics may remember when the guidelines for the season were stricter. In Eastern Orthodoxy, the season is still observed by many as “Nativity Lent.”

“In a pre-Vatican II context, Advent looked a lot like Lent,” noted Father Rick Hilgartner, associate director of the USCCB’s Secretariat of Divine Worship. “It was the season you used to prepare for Christmas, the way Lent helps you prepare for Easter.”

Today, it’s even hard for priests to follow the rhythms of the church’s prayers, hymns and rites, he said. Hilgartner said he tries to stay away from Christmas tree lots and shopping malls until at least halfway through Advent. He accepts invitations to some Christmas parties, even though they are held in Advent.

Now that it’s finally Christmas, he feels a pang of frustration when he turns on a radio or television and finds that — after being bombarded with “holiday” stuff for weeks — the true season is missing in action.

“It would be different, of course, if we all lived in a monastic community and the liturgical calendar totally dominated our lives,” said Hilgartner. “Then we could get away with celebrating the true seasons and we wouldn’t even whisper the word ‘Christmas’ until the start of the Christmas Mass. But the church doesn’t exist in a vacuum and we can’t live in a cultural bubble. …

“But it’s good to try to be reasonable. It’s good to slow down and it’s good to celebrate Christmas, at least a little, during Christmas. It’s good to try.”

“Revolutionary suicide” may do the trick, especially when combined with that grim quotation from one survivor, “They started with the babies.” But it was another Jonestown catch phrase that leapt into the national consciousness.

Sherri Wood Emmons heard it when she accepted a job with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) only four years after the massacre.

“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” said a friend, laughing.

“It’s understandable, I guess. We use humor to distance ourselves from things we don’t understand, things that frighten us,” noted Emmons, in her editorial introducing a DisciplesWorld journal issue marking the Jonestown anniversary. “It’s easier to poke fun at people than try to understand them. Those crazies, we say, shaking our heads. They must have been nuts.”

But there’s a problem with America’s three decades of sick laughter about 900-plus people drinking cyanide and fake fruit juice in honor of one man’s vision of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The Rev. Jim Jones really did flourish in the American heartland and begin his ministry in Indianapolis, of all places. In the early 1960s, his idealistic, multi-ethnic Peoples Temple was embraced with open arms by the Disciples of Christ, a mainstream church at the heart of the Protestant ecumenical establishment. When he moved his flock to California, he forged strong ties to George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Willie Brown and the San Francisco political establishment.

And those Jones disciples? “They were living out their faith in wants that might shame some of us today,” according to Emmons. “And they were Disciples of Christ. As much as we might like to forget that.”

In other words, Jones was a charismatic, talented minister whose work united rich and poor, black and white, young and old. That was before he started preaching socialism and saying he was the reincarnation of Jesus. That was before the sexual abuse, torture, drugs and violence.

Why didn’t anyone see who and what he was?

After the tragedy unfolded, the headlines marched past day after day, with each bizarre revelation adding to the horror and confusion. The Jonestown news coverage made a strong impression on me because I was young journalist, just out of college, who wanted to become a religion-beat reporter.

I kept waiting for mainstream journalists to dig into the religious roots of these tragic events, to explain what Jones believed and why his followers were so loyal. I waited a long time.

This was an important religion story. Wasn’t it?

Frustrated by why I was reading, and not reading, I called the dean of the religion reporters, the late George Cornell of the Associated Press. I remember the calm anger in his voice as he explained that few, if any, major news organizations had assigned religion specialists to help cover this shocking story that centered — for better and for worse — on the shocking demise of a pastor and his flock.

For many journalists, Cornell explained, Jonestown was too important to be a religion story.

“I think that a lot of newspaper people, a lot of journalists, grew up in a tradition where religion, at least the substance of religion, was out of the ballpark as far as newspapering is concerned,” he told me. “They hesitate to cover religion because they see it as a private matter. They don’t want it in the newspaper. Of course, this attitude could also be due to their ignorance of religion.”

That’s why it was hard to take Jones seriously during his rise. That’s why it was hard to take him seriously after he died and took his followers with him. That’s why it’s easier to laugh or to look away.

Jonestown was not an isolated case, explained Cornell. Anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take religion seriously. But many journalists just didn’t get it. This blind spot is real.

That was true 30 years ago and it’s true today.

“I mean, look at every major flash point in the world,” said Cornell. “There’s almost always a religious element involved — and it’s almost always a powerful one. … People just don’t see where the hammer is falling — where the vital brew is brewing. Religion is usually mixed up in it.”

In English this means, “Many years to you, Master.” Witty bishops in the Orthodox Church in America have started using this sentiment as the punch line in a joke about the impact the episcopate can have on their egos.

“What happens to a guy?”, said Bishop Jonah, during the church’s All American Council in Pittsburgh. “You put him on a stand in the middle of the church, you dress him up like the Byzantine emperor and you tell him to live forever. You know?”

The audience of clergy and lay leaders laughed, but it was nervous laughter. The atmosphere in the recent gathering was so tense, Bishop Jonah said later, that some of the bishops were afraid that “everything was about to unravel.”

Only 10 days earlier, the 49-year-old monk had been consecrated as assistant bishop of Dallas. Now, he was facing the clergy and lay leaders of a flock that was reeling after years of bitter scandal — including the disappearance of $4 million — that had forced the church’s last two leaders out of office.

The new and, thus, unstained bishop volunteered to face the assembly and answer hard questions about reform. The bottom line, he said, was that investigators found a “fundamentally sick,” corrupt culture inside the national headquarters that was rooted in fear and intimidation.

“Yes, we were betrayed. Yes, we were raped. It’s over. It’s over,” said Bishop Jonah. In fact, whenever church members seek healing, “we have to confront the anger and the bitterness and the hurts and the pain and the resentment that we have born within us as reactions against the people who have hurt us.

“By forgiving, we’re not excusing the actions. ? We’re not justifying anything. What we’re saying is, ‘My reaction is destroying me and I need to stop it. If I value Jesus Christ and the Gospel and communion with God, I need to stop it and move on.’ “

The audience responded with a standing ovation.

Then, 11 days after he became a bishop, the assembly — in a move that shocked young and old — elected Jonah as the new Metropolitan of All America and Canada. Current plans call for his enthronement at on Dec. 28th at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

The new leader of the Orthodox Church in America, which has its roots in Russia, was born James Paffhausen in Chicago and raised as an Episcopalian. He converted to Orthodoxy during his college years in California, went to seminary and, while studying in Russia in 1993, became a novice at the famous Valaam Monastery. After returning to America, he was ordained and spent 12 years building several missions and the Monastery of St. John of San Francisco in northern California.

Becoming a bishop turned his once secluded life upside down, explained Jonah. Now it’s hard to even discuss his stunning election as primate on Nov. 12.

“They talk about ‘his beatitude’ and I wonder who that is,” he said. “Your beatitude? Who? Where?”

On his 12th day as a bishop, he found himself delivering an address on his “vision for the church.” The new Metropolitan Jonah stressed college ministry, calling for Orthodox housing facilities and evangelistic ministries near as many campuses as possible, to help students living in “Animal House” conditions rooted in “sex, drugs, alcohol and despair.”

It’s also time for leaders in the church’s many ethnic U.S. jurisdictions to work together on charitable projects whenever and wherever they can, grassroots projects that he said will eventually produce Orthodox unity at the national, hierarchical level. Where are the Orthodox hospitals, schools and nursing homes?

If nationwide change is going to happen, said Jonah, it will have to grow out of respect and cooperation at all levels of the church.

“Hierarchy is only about responsibility, it’s not all of this imperial nonsense,” he said. “Thank God that we’re Americans and we have cast that off. We don’t need foreign despots. We are the only non-state Orthodox church. In other words, we are the only Orthodox church that does not exist under the thumb of a state — either friendly or hostile.

“So the church is our responsibility, personally and collectively, individually and corporately. What are you going to do with it?”

Religion can get very complicated, with layers of emotion stacked on centuries of history, doctrine, symbolism and ritual, said Ostling, who is best known for his decades of work with Time and the Associated Press. But mistakes are mistakes and it isn’t good for readers to keep seeing stories that, week after week, cause them to mutter, “Wait a minute. That’s just wrong.”

Here’s a prime example, a mistake Ostling keeps seeing in reports about the declining number of ordinations to the Catholic priesthood. This mistake often shows up in news coverage of mandatory celibacy for priests or the scandals caused by clergy sexual abuse.

Journalists often report that Rome does not ordain married men.

“Now it would be accurate,” said Ostling, “to say that the overwhelming majority of men ordained as Catholic priests are not married. It would even be accurate to say that ‘almost all’ priests are not married. But what about Eastern Rite Catholicism, where you have married priests? Then there are the married men who have been ordained in the Anglican Rite, who used to be Episcopal priests. You have a few Lutherans, too.”

Journalists will always argue about the meaning of words like “objectivity,” “fairness” and “balance.” But at some point reporters and editors should agree that accuracy is important and that it’s a bad thing when — year after year — critics accuse journalists, with good cause, of getting the basic facts wrong.

That’s the bottom line in my chapter in “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion,” a new book produced by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life. It’s hard for journalists to do a credible job covering religion events and trends when they cannot keep their facts straight. This is true whether one is parsing Vatican documents, the sermons of Iraqi clerics, the canon laws that affect millions of dollars in pensions and properties during a global Anglican schism or the faith testimony of an evangelical seeking the vice presidency.

The problem is that journalists who cover religion news — along with those who cover other complicated beats such as science, sports, law and the arts — must write stories that work on two levels. Their stories must be accessible enough for readers, yet accurate enough to pass muster with clergy, scholars and devout believers.

How can journalists “get” religion? How do we improve the odds that our newsrooms get it right? It’s crucial that journalists find journalistic solutions to this journalism problem.

* Journalists must face this reality: It’s impossible to understand what is happening in our world without understanding the power of religion in real life at the local, national and global levels.

* Journalists must be more humble and own up to our mistakes. In particular, we need to be more careful about our use of religious language, especially loaded labels such as “moderate” and “fundamentalist.”

* Newsroom managers, even during these hard times, must seek out skilled professionals who want to work on this beat, while striving to promote cultural and intellectual diversity. They need to offer training to other journalists whose work constantly veers into religious territory. Today, religion stories are everywhere.

* Reporters and editors who cover religion must find ways to get inside the daily lives of the people they cover. When religious believers tell their stories, we have to understand what they are saying and try to accurately capture their point of view, even when what they believe is controversial.

Yes, this can get complicated.

Does an Orthodox rabbi have the same beliefs as a Reform rabbi? Do “moderate” Baptists (think Bill Moyers) have the same beliefs as “conservative” Baptists (think Rick Warren)? Will an Anglican bishop in Nigeria automatically have the same doctrinal beliefs as one in New Hampshire? Will a Sufi mystic in Kashmir have the same understanding of the word “jihad” as an Islamist in the mountains of Pakistan?

Words matter, on the religion beat. Some of them are even sacred.

“Some people would say that little mistakes like this do not matter all that much,” said Ostling. “Well, they matter to the people who read the story and know that what they are reading is wrong. What does this say about our journalistic standards?”

But the bishops had to vote on Ex Corde Ecclesiae (“From the Heart of the Church”). After all, they had been arguing about this papal document throughout the 1990s, trying to square the doctrinal vision of Pope John Paul II with their American reality. Rome said their first response was too weak, when it came to insisting that Catholic schools remain openly Catholic. Finally, the bishops approved a tougher document on a 223-to-31 vote.

Soon after that 1999 showdown, someone “with a good reason for wanting to know” emailed a simple question to Russell Shaw of the United States Catholic Conference. Who voted against the statement?

“There was no way to know. In fact, the Vatican doesn’t know — for sure — who those 31 bishops where,” said Shaw, discussing one of the many mysteries in his book, “Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church.

“The secret ballots were destroyed,” he noted. “These days the voting process is even more secret, since the bishops just push a button and they’ve voted. Even if you wanted to know how your bishop voted, or you wanted the Vatican to know how your bishop voted, there’s no way to do that.”

Professionals have learned to read between the lines of debates held in the open sessions that the U.S. bishops choose to schedule. Outside those doors, insiders talk and spread rumors. Some bishops spin the press and others, usually those sending messages to Rome, hold press conferences, publish editorials or preach sermons. But many of the crucial facts remain cloaked in secrecy.

Of course, noted Shaw, few leaders of powerful institutions enjoy discussing their crucial decisions — let alone corporate or personal sins — in public. When Catholic insiders complain about “clericalism” they are confronting a problem that affects all hierarchies, from government to academia, from the Pentagon to Wall Street.

“It’s a kind of elitism, a way of thinking and behaving that assigns to the managerial class a superior status,” he said. “They are chiefs and everyone else is an Indian. They set the agenda. They always make the final decisions. They get to tell everyone else what to do.”

Of course, there’s truth in the old image that puts the pope at the top of an ecclesiastical pyramid, with ranks of clergy cascading down to the pews. Catholicism is not a democracy and there are times when leaders must keep secrets. That’s “a truth,” said Shaw, but it is “not the only truth,” since the whole church is meant to be knit together in a Communion built on a “radical equality of dignity and rights.”

Part of what is happening, he explained, is that some bishops are protecting a “facade of unity” that hides their doctrinal disagreements with the Vatican. While Shaw believes the bishops are more united with Rome now than they where were about 25 years ago, some bishops may be pushing for more and more closed “executive” sessions as a subconscious way to protect themselves.

Take, for example, the brutal waves of scandal caused by the sexual abuse of children and teens by clergy. For several decades, argued Shaw, the bishops have been afraid to openly discuss “the causes of the dreadful mess — nasty things like homosexuality among priests, theological rationalizing on the subject of sex and the entrenched self-protectiveness of the old clericalist culture.”

That’s the kind of scandal that creates global headlines. But, for most Catholics, more commonplace forms of secrecy shape their lives at the local level, said Shaw.

Consider another story reported in Shaw’s book, about a woman who quietly confronted a priest after a Mass in which he omitted the creed. When he failed to acknowledge the error, she said, “Father, you teach your people to be disobedient when you disobey the Church.”

The offended priest was silent. Then he leaned forward and whispered, “You know what honey? You’re full of it.” The priest walked away, giving the woman and her husband what appeared to be “the single-digit salute.”

Truth is, said Shaw, “clericalism is often alive and well at the local level. That’s the kind of secrecy and dishonesty that really cuts the heart of many local parishes, destroying any hope for real Communion there.”

One petition included two Catholic cardinals and a dozen bishops, Evangelical broadcasters, Eastern Orthodox bishops, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Baha’is, Orthodox and liberal rabbis, Scientologists and Protestant clergy of a various and sundry races and traditions. One Times article noted that these were signatures that “rarely appear on the same page.”

But there’s the rub. This was already old news.

Many of these religious leaders had already been working for a year or more on what became the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, landmark legislation that made religious freedom a “core objective” in all U.S. foreign policy, noted political scientist Allen Hertzke of the University of Oklahoma, speaking at a conference called “The Politics of Faith — Religion in America.”

This bill, he said, was the opening act in “broader, faith-based quest” to weave moral content into the fabric of American policies around the world, while liberating religious liberty from its status as the “forgotten stepchild of human rights.”

President Bill Clinton signed the International Religious Freedom Act on Oct. 27, 1998, and in the decade that followed this same interfaith coalition backed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, the Sudan Peace Act of 2002 and the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.

This coalition was “made up of groups that usually fought like cats and dogs on other issues, but would join together to work for religious freedom,” said Hertzke, speaking at the University of California, Berkeley, long known as Ground Zero human rights activism.

These leaders would work on religious-liberty issues over morning coffee and bagels, before returning to their offices where they usually found themselves in total opposition to one another on abortion, gay rights, public education and a host of other church-state issues. Nevertheless, their coordinated labors on foreign-policy projects “produced trust and relationships that had never existed before,” he said.

The question is whether this coalition’s ties that bind can survive tensions created by the current White House race and renewed conflicts over religious and cultural issues in America.

“The kinds of energies generated in these kinds of social movements are hard to sustain,” said Hertzke, after the conference. “There was always the concern that fighting over the familiar social issues would siphon away some of the energy that held this remarkable coalition together for a decade. …

“The fear is that if people feel really threatened on the issues here at home that matter to them the most — like abortion — then they will not be able to invest time and resources in these human-rights issues around the world.”

One reason this interfaith coalition never received much credit for its successes, he said, is that journalists usually focused on the efforts of conservative Christians to oppose the rising global tide of persecution of other Christians. This media preoccupation with the “Christian Right” often warped news coverage of broad, interfaith projects to protect the rights of all religious minorities.

In many cases, the results were inaccurate, biased and patronizing.

“Thus, abusive treatment of Christians abroad was labeled ‘persecution’ — in quotation marks.” Expressing similar grammatical doubts, a “grassroots group was described as gathering to pray for ‘what it calls’ Christian martyrs,” noted Hertzke, in his chapter in “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religon,” a new book produced by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life.

In one New York Times article, he noted, Christian activists seeking the release of prisoners were described as writing letters to countries “whose names they cannot pronounce.” Another article described efforts to end the civil war in Sudan as a “pet cause of many religious conservatives.”

This was a strange way to describe a movement that, at its best, combined the social-networking skills of evangelical megachurches with the pro-justice chutzpah of Jewish groups, the global reach of Catholic holy orders and the charisma of Buddhist activists in Hollywood.

“What we found out was that human rights are part of one package,” said Hertzke. “If you pull out the pin of religious freedom, it’s hard to support freedom of speech, freedom of association and other crucial human rights. … Religious freedom is a rich and strategic human right.”

That’s an easy question for evangelicals, Catholics and other religious believers who back Obama. Most would happily erase all evidence of his speech last spring to a circle of insiders behind closed doors in San Francisco. For those who have ignored national news in 2008, Obama talked about meeting voters in rural Pennsylvania, where hard times have crushed hopes and fueled resentments.

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter,” he said, that “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them … to explain their frustrations.”

Welcome back to the “culture wars,” all you politicos who hoped and prayed that talk about “values voters” and “pew gaps” would disappear. Instead, Republicans have been chanting this mantra — “bitter,” “cling,” “God” and “guns” — for months.

“In small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening,” said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as she hit the national stage. “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”

It’s crucial to know that this kind of cultural warfare has evolved throughout American history, said Todd Gitlin, who teaches journalism and sociology at Columbia University in New York City. The issues change from campaign to campaign, along with the fierceness of the fighting. But cultural and religious issues always matter.

“The culture wars always matter because Americans vote not simply, and not even necessarily first, for what they want but for whom they want. And whom they want is a function, in part, of who they are and how they … want to think of themselves. In a word, what kind of culture they embody,” said Gitlin, during a pre-election forum sponsored the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

These battles over symbols and substance are rooted in the fact that America was created “as the fruit of an ideology, not a nationality.” Thus, he stressed, “America is a way of life, in other words, a culture. So culture wars are as American as egg foo yung and tacos.”

But what are these “culture wars” really about? From Gitlin’s point of view, the fighting is not a simple standoff between “religion and irreligion,” because there are religious voices on both sides. Most would agree, he said, that these clashes pit “forces of modernization” against “forces of tradition.” Often, this seems to pit small-town values against cosmopolitan culture, or red-zip-code preachers against blue-zip-code professors.

From his perspective on the left, he said, all of this looks like an “ongoing fight … between the Enlightenment and its enemies.” Seriously, he said, “American has to outgrow this childish negation of reason.”

For Americans on the other side of the “culture wars,” that kind of talk sounds rather condescending, said Yuval Levin, who leads the Bioethics and American Democracy Project at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.

From the right, this cultural warfare resembles a “war of two populisms, what we might call in very broad terms, cultural populism and economic populism,” said Levin.

As a rule, the American left has been effective when it comes to appealing to the economic passions and resentments of average Americans. The right, meanwhile, has been stronger — especially since the earthquake that was the 1960s — when appealing to old-fashioned values of faith, family and unashamed patriotism.

In this election, economic fears may certainly triumph over concerns about traditional “culture wars” issues such as abortion, gay rights, the role of religion in public life and the moral content of popular entertainment.

Nevertheless, stressed Levin, Obama’s “bitter” speech proved that cultural questions are always lurking in the background. The candidate said, right out loud, what heartland conservatives truly believe San Francisco liberals think about them.

That mistake may not matter this year, but it isn’t a wise long-term strategy for a president.

“In America, unlike in Europe, cultural populism has generally been a lot more powerful than economic populism,” said Levin. “Americans don’t resent success. They don’t assume that corruption is the only way to the top, but they do resent arrogance and especially intellectual arrogance.”

Then there was the landmark Nevada trip to interview Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his wife Landra at their home. Landing a face-to-face interview with Sen. Hillary Clinton for “The 700 Club”? Say no more.

Finally, after a year of negotiations, Sen. Barack Obama’s staff took a leap of faith and scheduled an interview with the news team at the Rev. Pat Robertson’s flagship network. Then Obama came back for another interview, then another and another.

Before that fourth interview, Brody expected to shake hands once again. But Obama caught him off guard by moving in for one of those “Hey, how are you doing?” shoulder-to-shoulder bumps that colleagues use when greeting one another.

“It was strange,” said Brody, speaking at the annual Baptist Press Collegiate Journalism Conference. “You really don’t want to be chest-bumping White House candidates. It just doesn’t look right.”

Indeed, these are strange times. In the past year, Democrats have been talking more about their faith than the Republicans — part of a strategic attempt to capture a slice of a voting bloc that was so crucial in the 2004 elections. But in the age of talk radio, 24-hour cable TV coverage, weblogs and other forms of niche news, politicos are learning that they need to talk to a wider array of journalists to reach these values voters.

All kinds of doors are opening and “you have to be ready for your close-up,” Brody told an audience of student journalists in Nashville, mostly from Christian campuses across the Bible Belt.

“Go after it hard. Be very, very aggressive. I can’t tell you this enough,” he said. “You need to make multiple phone calls a day to get your source to talk. You need to make sure that you are constantly really going after the story. Don’t ever let up. …

“Make sure you really find your niche, and make sure you know what you are passionate about.”

After two decades in broadcasting — mostly in mainstream newsrooms — Brody has become a go-to commentator inside the Beltway, primarily by gaining a reputation as a fair-minded, even sympathetic sounding board for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Thus, Brody has even started turning up on MSNBC, CNN and NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Democrats turn to his occasionally goofy weblog, “The Brody File,” for insights into the views of conservative, centrist and progressive evangelicals. Republicans do the same thing, often to see how Democrats answer his frequent questions about hot-button social questions.

Brody stressed that he isn’t interested in asking “gotcha questions” about faith in an attempt to trip them up. The journalist has heard his own share of loaded questions during his lifetime, since he was raised as a Jew in New York City before converting to Christianity while in college. Brody isn’t fond of labels.

“I don’t have an agenda, but I am going to ask questions about faith” during CBN news broadcasts, he said. “I am going to ask personal questions about how the candidates go about making their decisions. Still, I know that there are shades of gray when people start talking about faith. … So much of our politics in the age of talk radio is totally back and white, but we really do try to avoid polarizing language.”

Take the Obama interviews, for example. It’s one thing, said Brody, to ask Obama specific questions about his liberal approach to Christianity, his support for abortion rights and commitment to expanding civil rights of gays and lesbians. It’s something else to “play judge and jury” and try to challenge the reality of Obama’s faith.

“There is no question that his sincerity shines through when he’s talking to you about his Christian beliefs and the role that his faith plays in his life,” said Brody. “This man says what he believes and he believes what he says. Obama has said over and over that he has given his life to Jesus Christ and I think people need to take his word on that. …

“The question is whether this kind of dialogue with Obama will continue. Are we going to be able to keep talking, without trying to demonize each other? That’s the big question.”