Altar Egos

"I don't think anyone wants people's pastors parsed, but to me I don't think that has to do with religion, but with attack politics, where everything is fair game," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. Mellman said the discussion of faith in campaigns must continue because religion is such an important part of many Americans' identities.

The Rev. John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ, Obama's denomination, issued a statement this week agonizing over the Obamas' decision to leave Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. "Many candidates and public officials now find it nearly impossible to be an active member of a particular religious community, given our divisive political culture."

The Rev. Welton Gaddy, the Monroe, La., Baptist minister who heads the Interfaith Alliance, also issued a statement of regret about the Obamas' decision. "This is a sad day in American politics and even sadder in American religion. Senator Obama is at the center of the storm, but all who wed religion to partisan politics share responsibility for this tragic development.''

Many voters say they don't like the religion-politics blend, for varying reasons.

Anna Torres, 30, an evangelical Democrat and stay-at-home mother from Los Angeles, said the stream of controversies shows that "religion tends to hurt the nominee. They should be more focused on talking about how they'll run the country and not religion. Those two need to be separated."

Joel Hammons, a 51-year-old coal miner from Craigsville, W. Va., said he is a Christian leaning toward voting for McCain. He said there hasn't been enough of the ''right'' kind of talk in the campaign about religion, about what he calls "moral" issues such as abortion and capital punishment. But there has been, he said, too much of the ''wrong'' kind of talk, in which pastors like Hagee and Wright are cited by candidates and then tossed overboard.

"These candidates, as long as they can use somebody to gain votes, they'll stick right with them. But when the going gets rough, they want to bail out. It makes them look worse than if they hadn't even affiliated to begin with," Hammons said.

Susan Jacoby, who writes about American religion and secularism, sees problems coming from several corners. Candidates are "getting what they deserve," she said, by talking so much about their faith beliefs. But the blame rests on the public, she said, for maintaining superficial attitudes to something as complex as faith.

"Pastors who say nutty things goes against our myth about churches, which is that only good and nice things are said in them," she said. "Americans don't want to look into the messy side of religion. They want candidates to be religious, but they want that faith to be a very bland, ecumenical, acceptable-to-all kind of faith. That's like asking for the moon."