The Party Faithful,  Amy Sullivan's new book is a must-read for academics, journalists and just about anyone interested in the recent entwining of American politics and religion. In lucid, elegant prose, Sullivan explains where we are today (or were pre-2008) with Republicans claiming to be God's Own Party while atheists, secular humanists and other others found safe haven in the Democratic party.

Sullivan begins her account of how the Democrats lost the religious vote in the early 20th century, providing colorful details about the emergence of fundamentalism, the rise of neo-evangelicalism and the sad case of Jimmy Carter. By 1980, the great migration of white Southern evangelicals to the party of Lincoln seemed a foregone conclusion. Pushed out by liberal causes and identity politics, once die-hard Southern Democrats were pulled in by the traditional values rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and his Republican friends. Unmoved by this mass defection, Democrats then ushered Catholics out.

At the nub of these shifts was the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe vs. Wade, that legalized abortion. Abortion would become central to the politics of the next three decades – the beating heart of the Right's crusade for traditional values and the cherished prize of feminists and the Left. Sullivan argues that these sharp polarizations are fading: younger evangelicals see a need to address other issues, and many mainstream Democrats are comfortable calling for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare.”

If Sullivan is right and Hillary Clinton's, Barack Obama's and John Edwards' ease with their own religiosity—and careful formulation of their support for abortion—signals the faithful that the Democratic Party has room for them, too.  That's significant because notwithstanding the recent Pew poll, which found number of Protestants and Catholics was down while the religiously unaffiliated were growing, evangelicals and Catholics can swing an election.

Reporters who want the full scoop—who did what, when, where and how—should read Sullivan sooner rather than later. The Party Faithful will provide helpful context for covering the next eight months.

Over at the New Yorker, Honor Moore has a fascinating piece about her father, Bishop Paul Moore, Jr.  The piece is interesting because Moore explores the nexus of her father's spirituality and sexuality—and how little she knew or understood either one. It is only when her father passes away that she comes to meet the man who had been his lover for 30 years. She learns from him that a sermon that had been pivotal in her acceptance and appreciation of her father was not at all what she had thought it was. On the night the sermon was preached, Bishop Moore mistakenly believed his longtime lover had died of AIDS.

“I had been at that service and it was during the sermon that night that I'd felt my father transfigured in the power of his preaching. It was also that night, years before the discovery of his hidden life, that, feeling the love coming from him as he preached, I had decided to accept who he was, to take the love he gave when he was his truest self, when he was preaching. Now I'd learned that my father had preached that night believing a man he loved had died.”

Is it possible to read this piece outside the context of the current state of the Anglican communion? Or maybe it's simply a story of a father and child. I'm curious to hear what others think.

In a passionate online opinion piece, Kavita Nandini Ramdas asks when the Democratic aspirants for president use their outsider perspectives to address global problems.

“The next president needs the ability to demonstrate the inner courage and conviction that comes from owning his or her 'otherness.' As a woman and a mother Hilary Clinton could bring insights and perspectives no other President in US history could have brought to the negotiating table of war and peace. As the stepson of an Indonesian Muslim and the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, Barak Obama manifests what it means to be a global citizen. What is at stake in this election is not merely the historic first that would be accomplished if either a black man or a woman became the next US president. What is at stake is the fragile future of our shared world.”

Ramdas uses race and gender to discuss how the two Democratic candidates could direct much-needed attention to underreported global problems. She cites, for example, “an epidemic in rape in conflicts from Nepal to Chiapas to the Democratic Republic of Congo,” “the widespread murder of educated women in Iraq by religious extremists, and the fact that women own 1% of the world's assets while providing two-thirds of its labor.”

I am frequently asked about the current coverage of religion and politics: Is there more or less? Is it better or worse?  There is more on religion this election cycle, but quantity is not the same as quality. Quality goes beyond gotchas, conflicts and testimonials to explore how, where and why ethical concerns and spiritual yearnings come into play. Ramdas' piece suggests there are religious threads that underlie pressing problems of race and gender, and that the willingness to be an agent for change can be an ethical and spiritual commitment.

The question for coverage is how to turn these elusive threads into concrete questions for the candidates. Both Clinton and Obama have made much of their religious convictions. But can they be pressed to explain how these convictions influence their perspectives, and hopefully their actions, on global problems of race and gender?

I enjoy reading colleagues who dissect the ways in which journalists write about religion. GetReligion grows more comprehensive by the day, and TheRevealer's snarky charm makes it a must. We, too, occasionally offer kudos and critiques on daily coverage, but just as often, share “found” religion that makes for  good stories. These artifacts, events and phenomena aren't religious by definition, but they spark questions, reflections and insights about ethical and spiritual concerns: Who am I? What holds meaning for me? How do I make the right choice?

On many Sundays during my twenties, these kinds of questions drove me out of my cozy Greenwich Village studio and up to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). There, I'd pose my spiky, solitary self before the agonies of Guernica, the subliminity of the Water Lilies or the abstract mysteries of a Rothko and contentedly ponder.

This past Sunday, it was déjà vu when I entered the light-filled space of BCAM, the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) . I felt like a twenty-something experiencing a rush of happy panic in the midst of MOMA's delights. (According to New York Times critic Roberta Smith, my reaction underscores some of the new museum's flaws.)  Smith's cavils notwithstanding, the BCAM collection, contemporary as it is, makes clear the historical relationship between religion and the visual arts.

That relationship, sometimes stated and often visceral, runs through the museum's three floors. From Warhol's iconic idols to Jeff Koons' reliquaries to Cindy Sherman's self portraits, the questions “Who am I?” “What am I?” and “What do I believe in?” faced me down. Damien Hirst's dead lamb and pinned butterflies helped me “see” the relationship between religion, art and science that three years worth of study had never made quite clear. And Richard Serra's “Band” reminded me how significantly insignificant (or perhaps insignificantly significant) I am.

For all its shortcomings (Smith points out that the artists are mostly white men more representative of New York than Los Angeles), BCAM offers an opportunity for awe and Aha moments! That's not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning—journalist or not.

The March issue of the Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/current, once the site is updated to the March issue) has three terrific stories that tackle religion in the contemporary world. Each is smart, well-reported and comes to a similar conclusion: Time is on our side —as the world grows smaller and more interconnected, religious extremism gives way to more moderate perspectives.

Alan Wolfe argues the case in an essay on the “coming religious peace.” Borrowing a page from John Wesley, Wolfe quotes the famous revivalist's prediction about religious enthusiasms: “I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any true revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger and love of the world in all its branches.”

In other words, material success leads to religious moderation. But you don't need to take Wolfe's or Wesley's word for it. A smart chart, graphing the findings of a recent Pew poll, illustrates the relationship between wealth and religiosity in several dozen nations. With the exception of the U.S., fatter coffers lead to waning fervor, at least among the rising middle class.

Eliza Griswold's piece “God's Country,” a look at the conflict between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, comes to a similar conclusion via a very different route. Thick with detail and illuminating interviews, Griswold says that the religious conflict can mask deep-seated economic and political problems. Nigerians who once co-existed now kill each other in a desperate struggle for resources as much as self-esteem: “When a government fails its people, they turn elsewhere to safeguard themselves and their futures, and in Nigeria, in the beginning of the 21st century, they have turned first to religion. Here, then, is the truth behind what Samuel Huntington famously calls religion's 'bloody' geographic borders: outbreaks of violence result not simply from a clash between two powerful religious monoliths, but from tensions at the most vulnerable edges where they meet—zones of desperation and official neglect where faith becomes a rallying cry in the struggle for land, water and work.”

Walter Russell Mead brings this all back home, predicting in “Born Again” that American evangelicals are becoming more moderate and more influential. (Yes, he knows he is bucking the current journalistic contention that evangelicalism is dead or dying.) Mead sees the movement headed to a more mature phase that will yield political clout through compromise and coalitions. That, in fact, is one way of interpreting the splintering of evangelical support among Huckabee, Obama and McCain. Or, as Mead writes, we're beginning to witness “a more pluralistic and less strident movement, more apt to compromise and less likely to be held hostage by a single issue or party.”

Reassured that things are getting better in this best of all possible worlds, your thoughts now may turn to a vacation, If so, the Atlantic has one more story on religion for you. Francis X. Rocca describes his stay at the Abbey of the Holy Cross of the Valley of the Fallen. The monastery, built by Franco, welcomes visitors. But the monks expect guests to adhere to their schedule, which includes more prayer, silence and potato salad than Rocca had bargained for. Rocca made do, but if enough readers pour in with euros to pile on the collection plate, those monks may moderate, too.

If you haven't yet seen Religion Dispatches, take a look. (Full disclosure: I am on the advisory board.) The organizing idea is to provide information and analysis on a woefully undercovered topic. In its own words, the site, funded by the Ford Foundation, provides “a platform for expert, critical exploration of religion in the contemporary world for a general readership.”

Simply put, they've asked a lot of great writers to post on the issues of the day. Opining on religion's messiness, Jeff Sharlet reminds us that its role in public life can't be resolved in a column, “Journalists, editors, scholars, my comrades on the God beat: Please don't tidy up the narrative of religion in America to conform to the demands of the election season op-ed pages.”

Sound easy? Read the coverage on the evangelical move (or not) to the Democrats' column. Reporters have spent the last eight years telling us that evangelicals are a conservative monolith. Now they're voting for Obama? How, when, where and why could this happen? Editors want the answer in 750 words or less.

Equally compelling is a post on religion and science by biologist Arri Eisen. (“I don't buy this whole battleground thing—us vs. them, science vs. religion, evolution vs. creation.”) And there's a wonderful/horrible piece by Shabana Mir on wearing a headscarf in a Catholic high school in the 1980s.   (Sister Rose did not like it at all.)

Religion Dispatches is exactly what we need now: smart writing about a crucial topic. Think about it: is there a hot button issue that does not intersect with religion, spirituality or ethics? Whether writing about politics, the environment, health care, medicine, science or education, the religious dimension should mess up any hope of setting down a simple story. Instead, the requisite tidy conventions and conflict narratives are introduced over and over, and they repeatedly fail to provide the information necessary to negotiate a complex world.

Almost a century ago, Walter Lippmann wrote that the crisis of democracy was, in actuality, a crisis of journalism.

“Everywhere today men are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand. Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise.”

Religion Dispatches wants to make facts (and subsequent analyses) readily available. It's a crucial task and a welcome site.

I'm not the only one wondering what happened to Jack Bauer. The Wall Street Journal wants to know, too. Now, thanks to reporter Rebecca Dana, we discover he's another casualty of the war in Iraq.

24, which debuted shortly after 9/11, captured a cultural moment. Jack Bauer was more than the hero we needed, he was the answer to our prayers. No matter what terrorists, drug dealers, and recalcitrant family members threw at him, Jack struck back calmly, elegantly and with deadly force.

But by the sixth, and most recent, season, Jack's strikes became harder to condone. In fact, his tendency to break fingers, shoot kneecaps, and administer pain-causing drugs to elicit information seemed uncomfortably like, well, torture.

Before you could say “jihad,” senior U.S. military officers began criticizing 24's portrayal of torture, the New Yorker ran a critical profile, and Fox network executives fretted that the series supported the policies of an out-of-favor administration.

“Ratings dropped by a third over the course of last year's sixth season,” Dana writes. “Producers would later experience trouble casting roles, once some of the most desirable in television, because the actors disapproved of the show's depiction of torture. 'The fear and wish-fulfillment the show represented after 9/11 ended up boomeranging against us,' says the show's head writer, Howard Gordon. 'We were suddenly facing a blowback from current events.'”

Jack needed some work (and not just to fix those bloodshot eyes). Since last spring, the show's writers and producers have argued over whether to give Jack a guilty conscience, a shot at redemption, or a permanent place on the dark side.

What's interesting (besides Agent Bauer's fate and the open question of his return) is the cultural debate implicit in the series' decline. Is it a referendum on Bush policies in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib? Are American viewers weary of the suspension of civil rights and the implementation of racial profiling? Have we concluded that we, as a nation, cannot countenance torture? Big questions like these often are better understood and processed through television story-telling than by newspaper reports. In the quiet semi-darkness of our living rooms, we can allow in the jarring revelations and unsettling epiphanies that leap too boldly from the morning paper.

That's why Peter Steinfels had such an interesting story in Saturday's New York Times. Steinfels reported that pollsters only ask Republicans if they're born-again. Then they can tell journalists the percentage of Republicans evangelical voters, and several news cycles will probe the significance of religious voters to the GOP.  But since no one asks the same question of Democrats, there's no way to gauge the role of religion for those voters; the assumption is they are secularists or worse.

If 24 has cultural resonance, then some, maybe many, evangelical voters may be thinking about the ethical dilemmas in which we, as Americans, find ourselves. Maybe some will vote Democratic this year, but we'll never know from the news reports. We'll need to wait and ask Jack.

The complex intersection of Turkish politics and religion was captured this week in the New York Times' coverage of headscarves. The big news is that the Turkish government will lift its 11-year-old ban on head coverings worn by university women. However, headscarves must be tied loosely under the chin (no burkas, chadors or neck-coverings), and the ban still holds off campus.

Sabrina Tavernese writes: “A majority of Turks see the measure—submitted Tuesday to Parliament, where it is expected to pass—as good for both religion and democracy.

“Here the country's most observant citizens have been its most active democrats, while its staunchly secular old guard—represented by the military and the judiciary—has acted by coup and court order.”

Tavernese correctly points out that the issue is far more complex than many Westerners believe. One of her sources, a liberal Turkish law professor, explains the ban is a human rights issue; it would be similar to forbidding Orthodox Jewish students from wearing yarmulkes to class.

Nukhet Sandal is a Turkish doctoral student in International Relations at USC and an opponent of the ban. When I emailed Tavernese's story to her, she responded, “The coin has two sides.  In my country, apart from the headscarf issue, no one has suffered because s/he is a Muslim.  We are all Muslims.  However, many people died or were punished in some form because they were not proper Muslims. I am happy that they found a solution to the headscarf issue but I am still very much worried for those other issues.”

Those other issues, according to Sandal, range from couture (wearing mini-skirts or short) to law (criminalizing adultery). She also noted that the compromise, headscarves that tie under the chin, permits only the traditional Turkish style. In other words, the government sanctioned option underscores the nexus of religion and nationalism.

Head coverings will be a contested issue for a long time to come. And it's not the first time that women's bodies are a battleground for cultural clashes related to political power, as domestic debates over abortion and family values demonstrate. But it is significant that local concerns now play out on an international stage. That means outside observers, journalists especially, need to understand that many issues are at stake and that few conflicts are simply black and white.