The Democrats’ new Director of Religious Outreach, Alexia Kelley, is already in action with the launch of a new DNC website for the Kerry/Edwards campaign,KerrySharesOurValues.org. The website champions the “other” religious issues (poverty, war), that are meant to displace Reps’ monopoly on God. But she’s not all oppposition. Kelley joins the team after conservatives drove out two former Kerry religion advisors, and perhaps she’s taken the bait that to beat their opposition, Dems will have to join them. While we’re not sure of Kelley’s politics, she’s joining on at least one front, copping the Red State style of a distinctly Republican beast: folks, grab your voters’ Comparison Chart and meet the “Faith & Values Action Team,” DNC style. (Hat tip to Melissa Rogers.)

Gay marriage, persecuted Christians, porn, abortion, “Plan B” emergency contraception, workplace religiosity, school prayer, the Ten Commandments and Roman-style decadence. Whew! Wes Allison‘s tour de force report on Tampa’s chapter of the evangelical group, Concerned Women for America, in The St. Petersburg Times, touches on almost every religious culture war issue that’s arisen this year, and with good cause: the CWA is praying over them all. In addition to providing a thoughtful portrait of chapter leader Sheryl Young’s religious journey, Allison considers turns a key eye to the nature of Christian Conservative activism. For a side with considerable political weight, he notices, they sure do think of themselves as underdogs. Allison quotes Philip Goff, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University, on the trouble with their persecution politics: “‘They have taken government. There’s no doubt about it. They have more power than any time at least in our lifetime. But they can’t say that they have control, because then they lose power. They have to continue to use that rhetoric — that paradigm of religious outsider — in order to rally people to the cause.'”

A German federal court has ruled that a regional law in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, forbidding Muslim teachers from wearing hijabs in public schools, must also be applied equally to the state’s Catholic nuns, who will now be required to remove their habitsbefore entering a classroom. While the Pope has not directly referred to headscarf controversies, this weekend he encouraged believers to display signs of their religion with pride.

“‘It’s such a lousy business, and it’s so dishonest across the board. God has told me, “You can do it a different way.”‘” Christian Brothers Automotive founder, Mark Carr, talks to Pamela Yip ofThe Dallas Morning News about the growing trend of Christian-themed businesses, in auto repair, debt counseling, dating services and financial planning.

Mark W. Roche, Notre Dame dean of the College of Arts and Letters, takes on the old Catholic hierarchy of values (read: voting issues) in The New York Times, but finds a few new things. Beyond what’s become a common comparison of two different definitions of “life issues” — abortion and stem cells in the Republicans’ favor; just war, just welfare state, environmental stewardship and opposition to capital punishment on the Democrats’ side — Roche considers data regarding abortion rates: far fewer abortions take place under Democratic administrations than Republican. “There are many reasons for this shift,” Roche figures. “Yet surely the traditional Democratic concern with the social safety net makes it easier for pregnant women to make responsible decisions and for young life to flourish.”

John Kerry packed two times the God campaigning into one Miami Sunday, visiting a Haitian Catholic church yesterday before meeting Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton at a Baptist service, where Jackson told worshippers that the political concerns they should worry about are those that touch their everyday lives, not gay marriage.