If you read out of this or into this a partisan endorsement or non-endorsement, I am not making myself clear. It is a comment on media and history. Media: the mantra or codified way of treating Democratic presidential candidates’ public expression of religion in 2007, as in last week’s TV special, is to say that they are playing catch-up ball against Republican candidates, reaching for the religious constituency out there that the secular-minded modern Democrats abandoned. That may or may not be true in respect to strategy. It is historically inaccurate to suggest that this is a new virus.

To review: after Woodrow Wilson’s overplaying of the religious hand, Republican presidents Harding (Baptist), Coolidge (Congregationalist) and Hoover (Quaker) added little to public discourse about public religion. In World War II Roosevelt began to restore such discourse, manifesting and promoting the life of prayer, demonstrating a kind of Episcopal serenity when facing crisis.

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On the "place of questioning in faith."

The place is clear: it is central.
Begin scripturally:
- Abraham and Sarah questioned when told of potential good news
- The Psalmist questioned, on more pages than not
- Prophets like Habakkuk, asking what one book called 'The Eternal Why'
- The disciple Thomas questioned so much he gets nicknamed 'doubting Thomas'
- A questioning man in a Jesus-story said, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief"
- The disciples of Jesus did
- The apostle Paul dealt with the questions of faith and unfaith
- Oh, by the way, Jesus questioned: in a garden the night before he died and in a shout when he was dying, according to gospel stories. "My God, my God, WHY have you forsaken me?" is pretty strong.
- You could not get far in writing stories of saints and scholars in the Christian tradition--and, not likely, very far in other religions--without question marks
- My specialty in Christian history is Martin Luther, who regularly wrote and showed how the underside of faith is doubt, and that doubt never goes away permanently and completely.

Given that score for "Bible believers" and and believers through the ages, my question would be:

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