Wash Post headline gets it wrong: Melanie Mattson of Just a Bump in the Beltway calls The Revealer‘s attention to a story in today’s paper on a letter to Bush from 10 “teachers of Christian ethics.” The story is solid, and important — conservative and liberal theologians are distressed by the Bush campaign’s attempts to recruit churches. The headline, though — “Pastors Issue Directive in Response to Reelection Tactic” — treats Christian leaders as if they’re interchangeable. But few, if any, of the letter signers are actually pastors, a term, Mattson points out, reserved for the leaders of congregations.

The L.A. Times‘ report on the “emerging church movement” tells you everything you want to know about the evangelical breakaways said to be revolutionizing evangelical worship styles — except what they believe. Is this conservative theology dressed up in “alternative” clothing? Does the movement’s anti-institutional slant change its approach to God? Evangelical writer Os Guiness says that this movement may be to the present what the Christian Right was to the 1980s. Does that mean it will get political?

In 2000 Muslims favored Bush over Gore by as much as 90 percent in some polls. Not so today, writes Dante Chinni of Christianity Today: “It’s amazing how much can change in four years – years that have included Sept. 11, John Ashcroft, and the Patriot Act. The latest poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows John Kerry with 54 percent of the Muslim vote in the 2004 race, comfortably ahead of Ralph Nader, who garners 26 percent. The president? With a little work he may break out of the single digits with Muslim-American voters.”

Don Lattin of The San Francisco Chronicle reports that researchers at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y., have compiled one of the first comprehensive studies on the Bush administration’s efforts to redirect government grants to churches and other faith-based groups. The study states that “‘Religious organizations are now involved in government-encouraged activities ranging from building strip malls for economic improvement to promoting child car seats.”’ And here’s another.

Rev. Jerry Falwell has announced plans to open a conservative law school this month to train attorneys who will fight for conservative causes. “‘We want to infiltrate the culture with men and women of God who are skilled in the legal profession,'” said Falwell. “‘We’ll be as far to the right as Harvard is to the left.'”

“If something goes wrong, the buck stops with the spirit world…And you can’t call the spirit world to come and explain why this was done this way and not that way.” The New York Times’s Michael Wines reports on the debate in South Africa over licensing its faith-healing sangomas.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake rules that a Bible display located outside the civil courthouse in downtown Houston violates the separation of church and state. Read more.