Religion

After all, it's Sunday.

The Pope at least is dealing with the really important things in this world right now.

[T]he Vatican released a statement Tuesday claiming that the Catholic Church is the only Christian organization eligible to use the term church to describe itself.

  Ear to the Ground

Don't tell that to the Baptists.

As Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy report in this week's TIME cover story, the three Democratic frontrunners are leading a fundamental shift in how their party thinks about religious Americans, which includes the first party-wide effort to target and court Catholic and evangelical voters. Republicans, meanwhile, have been lining up to receive the seal of approval from Pat Robertson and James Dobson. But at the same time, Mitt Romney has gone to great lengths to avoid talking about his Mormonism, John McCain's religious advisors quit his campaign in disgust, and when the AP inquired as to what church Rudy Giuliani attended, the former mayor essentially told them to mind their own business. [Ed: Maybe Rudy's only sensible stance.]

[...]

Senator Clinton, the lifelong Methodist and one-time Sunday school teacher, is in a bind: So many voters think they "know" she can't possibly be religious that when she speaks about her faith, they interpret it as pure political posturing.

[...]

[A]ccording to the new TIME poll, only 15% of registered voters believe that Hillary Clinton is "strongly religious," compared to 22% for John Edwards and 24% for Barack Obama. Perhaps more problematic for Clinton is the fact that nearly one-quarter of respondents (24%) say they know she is "not religious".

[...]

[A]s the results of a new TIME poll show, the conventional wisdom about the two political parties and religion may be so ingrained that no amount of evidence to the contrary can change perceptions.

  Time

Why would we expect otherwise from a body of people who still believe WMD were found in Iraq?

....but hey, believe what you want....you will anyway.