You get no points for going to the "wrong kind" of church.

of this point.

First off, I think Obama's gotten plenty of points -- and delegates -- in states where he used his "committed Christian" material.  Those points aren't going away.

Some day by gum we're gonna get it right.

"The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is ... between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to 'get religion,' even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular."

 if one could figure out a way to talk about the Democratic Party's relationship with religion without propping up the Republican Talking point that Democrats look down on people of faith.

Obviously, other bloggers are better able to discuss how this Rev. Wright business dovetails with Obama's previous rhetoric on religion and Democrats.

What I have to add to the mix, what I draw attention to is what Obama said about religion at a certain San Francisco fundraiser.

What I have learned about Obama is that he was never asking Democrats to have a more tolerant view of like minded less secular people, he was just trying to put himself in a position to use Religion the same way republicans do.  To manipulate people into supporting him.

What I mean is, consider two ways of regarding religion:

1.  Speaking less than kindly about it in an effort to justify separation of church and state.

2.  Using it to manipulate people politically.

A long time ago, I kept referring to a poll that showed that voters considered Obama and Edwards more religious than Clinton.  It was a perception issue.  We know Clinton is religious.  To say she is less religious than Edwards or Obama can be regarded by both secular progressives and Clinton supporters as a factually inaccurate statement.

All this meant is that Clinton, a religious person, did a better job than the other two of keeping her religion separate from her public life.  

I think Obama has definitely received some benefits from his strategy of publicizing his faith in earlier contests to help him connect to voters as LarryNYC has noted. To some extent, his hand may have been forced by the Muslim rumors as someone noted here in comments (sorry, forgot who that was1).  But I think those benefits are now at an end and the liabilities are now lining up to bite us all in the butt.

Although I think the media coverage has been relatively positive, I think we might find a disconnect at the voting booth. IMO Obama will shore up any flagging support in his base but won't be able to penetrate Clinton's base. The media coverage may have the effect of neutralizing the effect of this in the primary but masking the potential effect in the GE.

What Obama has done is try to have it both ways.  That's untenable.

I personally liked the discussion on faith, but I also liked Hillary's reticence to discuss her choices specifically.

Obama now appears to be worse than hypocritical.  He appears to be a cynic of the worst type.  Go to Church for expediency?  For connections?  To write a book and make himself "acceptable?"  

And then he talks about healing the soul of the nation?

Good gravy.

This attitude is antithetical to spiritual principles.

I go back to one key point, however.  He cannot write a book calling Wright his spiritual mentor, give interviews and discuss how he bounces ideas off of Wright often, and then now say he was really nothing more than a pastor.  He is either pretending people don't hear the news and know that's a contradiction or he simply doesn't care.

In Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democrats boast the most overtly religious cross-on-their-sleeve presidential candidates since Jimmy Carter prayed alone.

Really? Hillary Clinton is one of the "most overtly religious cross-on-her sleeve presidential candidates (blah blah blah)".

I'd say that's true of Obama, but definitely not so of Clinton. This reminds me of one of the ploys of the main stream media. Take a Republican scandal (say... the Abramoff scandal) and try to drag Democrats in no matter how inconsequential their connection to it.