Religion might play a crucial role in the upcoming US presidential elections in November, a new poll shows.
The poll, conduced for Time news magazine, found that those who consider themselves 'very religious' support incumbent George W Bush over his democratic challenger John Kerry by 59 per cent to 35 per cent.
But the preference more than reverses when 'not religious' voters are polled. They prefer Kerry over Bush by a vast majority of 69 per cent to 22 per cent.
Asked if a President should be guided by his faith when making policy, 63 per cent Democrats say "no" while 70 per cent Republicans say "yes".
The gap would probably be even wider if it were not for those black voters who tend to be socially conservative, attend church regularly but nonetheless vote for Democrats, Time said.
The battle is not so much between faiths as within them. The more traditionally religious that people say they are, the more often they pray and attend worship services, the more likely they are to vote for Bush.
Professor John Green of the University of Akron in Ohio was quoted as saying. "We used to have antagonism between religious traditions, Catholics versus Protestants versus Jews; now what we have is liberal Protestants linking up with liberal Catholics and liberal Jews against an alliance of conservative Protestants, conservative Catholics and conservative Jews."
The Religion Gap, Time says, presents both Bush and Kerry with special challenges.
Kerry has to walk a line between his personal faith, that of the 11-year-old altar boy who used to write his sister to remind her to say her prayers, and the more secular leanings of his core voters.
He also faces a small squad of conservative Catholic bishops who say they would refuse to serve Communion to politicians who, like Kerry, reject the church's teachings on issues such as abortion. One has gone so far as to suggest that any unrepentant Catholic who even votes for such a candidate should refrain from taking Communion, the magazine points out.
For Bush, who promised to unite the nation after years of bitter partisan battle, the choices, it says, are also stark. As the country splits between the faithful and the secular, how does he continue to inspire the white Evangelicals, who support him in overwhelming numbers, while not alienating the independents or further inflaming the Democrats so that their turnout rises as well?
And more important than the politics is the policy. How, for instance, does a devout President rally a country against an enemy that claims to fight in God's name without implying that this is a Holy War?
"For every person who likes the way he talks about his faith and America, there's another who's repulsed by it," Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington, was quoted as saying.