That's the rhetorical question Welton Gaddy who heads the Interfaith Alliance posed in an e-blast today.  He makes a good point.

Sunday night's Compassion Forum on CNN provided an opportunity to get some relevant answers about the respective stances of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the role of religion in government. Instead, the moderators asked some clearly inappropriate questions about the candidates' religious beliefs, and failed to ask others that would have given the voting public insight into the candidates' positions on these important issues.

 Here is the money quote:

If a potential employer asked you questions about your religious beliefs in a job interview, it wouldn't only be offensive, it would be illegal. The media needs to stop imposing a de facto religious test on the candidates.

The Compassion Forum was essentially a public interview for the job of President of the United States. And if it had been an interview for any other job in America, a good number of the questions asked would have been downright illegal.

There is quite a debate going on about the alleged death, decline or irrelvance of the religious right. It is a perennial discussion stretching back decades, and led mostly by waves of pundits and self promoters surfing the currents generated by Inside the Beltway PR shops. (I debunk these bogus rounds of sloganeering from from time-to-time.) Part of this is tied to efforts to marginalize public discussion of reproductive rights, marriage equality and matters related to separation of church and state.  

Fortunately, Barry Lynn and Welton Gaddy not only know that the Religious Right is not dead -- but they have coauthored a book about it with ideas about what to do. Related to this, thier respective organizations, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Interfaith Alliance Foundation have been promoting ten questions citizens should ask of candidates at all levels this election season.  All this has the editorial writers at the hometown paper of James Dobson's Focus on the Family gobsmacked! Outraged! And apparently out to prove Lynn and Gaddy correct.

The Greater Blogosphere is, as always, keeping an eye on the role of the religious right in public life.  

This week, there are notable posts about the mobilization by the religious right to thwart efforts against global warming; assaults, (as always), on separation of church and state and reproductive rights; and on the struggle over the facts and interpretation of history.  

And the another happens to be me.  

It is an honor to be following in the footsteps of pastordan and Chuck Currie who came before me as Welton Gaddy's guests on his new segment "blogs of belief" on his Air America radio show, State of Belief. This is a section of the program that runs down what blogs are discussing this week. Welton and I recorded the interview on Thursday. We chatted briefly about several of our election season posts currently on the front page at Talk to Action:   Russ Bellant's series on Dick DeVos, a longtime financier of the Christian Right who is running for governor of Michigan this year; my post on Christian nationalist David Barton's campaign swing through Ohio; and Chip Berlet's essay on the question of whether the IRS is singling out the liberal All Saints Episcopal Church for violations of the tax code's restrictions on electioneering from the pulpit -- and perhaps ignoring far more eggregious and widespread violations by conservative churches.

Yesterday Sunday 5 PM, Air America aired an unprecedented radio show segment : a collaboration [produced by Isaac-Davy Aronson] between Talk To Action and Interfaith Alliance head Rev. C. Welton Gaddy's, "State of Belief" : a 4-way discussion between Gaddy and three leaders (and also writers on Talk To Action) in the fight against the far right effort to take over and destabilize mainline Protestantism , to split up, neutralize, and take over churches and potentially even entire denominations.

Enormous financial resources, and the traditional heart of liberal democracy in America, are at stake.

The conversation - a collaboration between Talk To Action, and State of Belief -  had no precedent. If you consider yourself to be on the Christian or religious left or if you just consider yourself to be politically knowledgeable, listen to the show You won't find out about the Shadow War from reading or listening to Jim Wallis or Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun. You WILL learn about it by reading Talk To Action and by listening to this show.

Here is the mp3 podcast

"In conjunction with the website Talk to Action, State of Belief  takes an unprecedented look into the takeover of America's churches, revealing the ugly truths, personal experiences, and exhaustive research of four leaders." This, according to the show's press release for what promises to be a pioneering piece of radio.

(I changed the title of this diary, because the subject line on my tip jar comment was, in retrospect, much better.)

Welton Gaddy, host of the Air America show State of Belief, will be a guest on The Majority Report with Sam Seder and Janeane Garofolo tonight at 8pm EST.  (Some guy named Markos Moulistas will also be on there.) Gaddy will be discussing his upcoming show -- which is the first national radio discussion of the two decade long attacks on the mainline Protestant churches in the U.S. (No bogus war on Christmas and Christians thing here. This is the real deal.)