The Progress Report.

Pastors politicking and religious hypocrisy.

1)  Piece by Frank Scaeffer, a self-described life-long Republican and former evangelical leader, on Evangelical/Republican Racist Hypocrites for McCain, or Redemption.

Senator Obama won scholarships to America's top academic institutions, was voted by his peers to be editor of the Harvard Law Review, is a family man with an exemplary and obviously loving marriage, has a wife who is a brilliant charismatic woman, two lovely children, is a churchgoing born-again Christian comfortable with his faith, has avoided making the fast buck in the new gilded age of greed when he could have, served his community, is thoughtful, considered in his opinions, slow to anger, proved right in his judgment about the Iraq war, looks at every side of a question before making a decision, and is not given to grandstanding. He would be vastly ahead in the polls, even in polls of Evangelical voters who, after all, are also watching their savings and home values evaporate... unless he happened to be... black.

I speak as someone who was brought up in an Evangelical household by famous and influential Evangelical leaders (Francis and Edith Schaeffer). And this year even I've learned something new about my old Evangelical/Republican tribe! This election has shown the true nature of the Evangelical/Republican establishment as never before.

2)  Orange County pastors test the IRS rule against politicking:

...He urged members to think about their faith when voting and spent much of his 40-minute sermon giving a partisan speech about the presidential candidates and their issues. "According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama," Drake said. "Mr. Obama is not standing up for anything that is tradition in America."  [Notice the use of his middle name to scare the flock?]

This is the kind of thing that happened in the last election. People need to see through it, look within themselves, to break away from churches that begin to mix state in. that begin to tell you whom to vote for, how to vote.

What's more, looking back at Schaeffer's piece, when you compare the two candidates at hand, if religious voters can separate from the issue of abortion and look at the two candidates in their lives, in their histories, in what they have done for their communities and in their gleaming from their own churches a desire to help others, to demonstrate the highest possible morality when it comes to raising his children, setting examples for others and giving back to the world -- all things I would hope would be important to true Christians and true believers in other religious faiths -- then to me it is no contest. It is Barack Obama, not John McCain, who reflects these values most clearly.

James Dobson Doesn't Speak For Me: Web site.

(From Huffington Post's Sara Kugler and AP Religion Writer Eric Gorski)

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Methodist pastor from Texas and longtime supporter of President Bush who has endorsed Obama, said Tuesday he belongs to a group of religious leaders who, working independently of Obama's campaign, launched a Web site to counter Dobson at http://www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com. The site highlights statements from Obama and Dobson and asks visitors to compare them.

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Barack Obama wrote in A Call to Renewal: "And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope."

What Dobson and his supporters have always been about is using religion as a measuring stick and as a tool for divisiveness, as a way of justifying the imposition of their morality on others (exactly what they've railed about at Obama and others), even as a means to justify war.  "Our way or the highway to hell," essentially.