Ran across a gem in this Atlantic article:

Many people saw the 2004 presidential election as pitting Americans who are religious against those who are not. An article by Steven Waldman in the online magazine Slate provides some perspective on the divide:

"As you may already know, one of America's two political parties is extremely religious. Sixty-one percent of this party's voters say they pray daily or more often. An astounding 92 percent of them believe in life after death. And there's a hard-core subgroup in this party of super-religious Christian zealots. Very conservative on gay marriage, half of the members of this subgroup believe Bush uses too little religious rhetoric, and 51 percent of them believe God gave Israel to the Jews and that its existence fulfills the prophecy about the second coming of Jesus."

The group that Waldman is talking about is Democrats; the hard-core subgroup is African-American Democrats.

If the left seriously expects to see a Democrat in the White House in 2009, they had better get their noggins around the concept that faith is important to most Democratic voters (and certainly the same goes for the growing masses of independents). The Democratic nominee had better be able to pass the giggle test when they talk about their faith.  ¶ 11:44 AM