Religion will play an important role in today's South Carolina Democratic primary, just as it did in last week's South Carolina Republican primary. The difference is that we'll learn less about how religion affects today's vote than we learned about how it influenced last week's contest.

Last week, thanks to exit polls, we understood the religious breakdown, how often voters attended religious services, whether they considered themselves born-again or evangelical Christians, whether they said the candidates' religious beliefs mattered and what they thought about abortion. And the polls helped to shape the news coverage, so we saw headlines such as: "Evangelical Republicans Drive S.C. Primary" and "Ideology, Religion Important in S.C."

If previous exit polls this cycle are any indicator, religion will be much less central to the exit polls today. At most, Democrats have been asked which religion they identify with and how often they go to church. In Iowa and Michigan, Democrats weren't asked about religion at all. And that, in turn, has shaped the news coverage, making it appear that one party has a monopoly on religion in this race.

I'm chief of staff of the Democratic National Committee and CEO of the 2008 Democratic Convention. I'm also an ordained Pentecostal minister. So I've been encouraged by the growing attention paid to the role of religion in politics as we go about the important task of electing our next president. I've been disappointed, however, with the focus of the discussion so far.

Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith. My own support for the party stems from my sense that it is most emblematic of gospel values. Democrats believe in equal opportunity for all Americans, that no child should go to bed hungry or go without health care, that we should be good stewards of the earth, that we shouldn't pass on debt to our children, and that people who work hard should be able to earn a living wage so they can support their families.

As a "big tent" party, we embrace and represent people from a number of faith traditions. The religious diversity of our party reflects the rich religious diversity of our nation -- and this includes those who don't identify with a religious tradition.

But, for too long, we allowed the other side to define us and our values. Some Democrats were reluctant to talk about faith on the campaign trail. While strong, our faith was a personal, not partisan, matter.

Following the 2004 election, it became clear that Republicans used religion to create a divide. And, as people of faith and as Democrats, we had a responsibility to speak out. That's what we're doing now. The DNC has been actively engaging people of faith who share the core values and principles of the Democratic Party. We've assembled a team of religious leaders -- including pastors, theologians and organizational leaders -- to open a dialogue and build coalitions around our shared values. And America has seen the Democratic presidential candidates sharing their own faith journeys, talking about how faith informs their politics.

We know the support is there -- and growing. In fact, Democrats narrowed the Republican advantage among weekly churchgoers in the 2006 election, and a recent Pew survey found that the number of young evangelicals who identified themselves as Republican dropped by 15 percentage points, from 55 percent in 2001 to 40 percent today.

Yet the exit polls and the media reports and the pundits have largely missed this story. They often fail to acknowledge that people of faith are and can be Democrats.

To be sure, exit-poll questions asking Republicans if they are born-again or evangelical Christians may be trying to approximate questions in years past about identification with the "Religious Right." But this is an outdated script that leaves the impression that religion and faith matter only to Republicans.

Religion will continue to play a prominent role in the Democratic nominating process as well. And pollsters and pundits and all the media would do well to examine this interesting and important dynamic.

The writer is chief of staff of the Democratic Party and CEO of the Democratic Convention in Denver.

Dear Polling or Political Director:

Religion is playing an unprecedented role in the 2008 presidential campaign; the need for accurate and thorough information about religious voters is difficult to overstate. Thus far, the National Election Pool's exit poll surveys have pigeonholed evangelicals, reinforcing the false stereotype that we are beholden to one political party.

Your entrance and exit polls at the Iowa caucuses asked Republican caucus-goers if they were "born-again or evangelical Christian(s)," but did not ask the same question of Democrats. This omission left a substantive hole in subsequent news coverage of the caucuses. Based on your polling, the public helpfully learned that born-again or evangelical Christians played a central role in Mike Huckabee's victory, but received no information about the impact of evangelical voters in the Democratic race.

As reported by numerous news organizations, candidates of both parties spoke explicitly of their religious faith while campaigning in Iowa and have robust faith outreach operations. By omitting the question of evangelical/born-again identification from the Democratic polls, you prevented the public from seeing the full picture of how the bipartisan courtship of evangelical voters affected the outcome of the first contest of the 2008 campaign and perpetuated the mis perception that all evangelical Christians are Republicans.

No party can own any faith. Evangelicals have broadened their agenda to include care for the planet, the poor and the stranger, and as a result are increasingly diverse politically.

Your New Hampshire exit polls gathered much more detailed information about voters' religion but still asked only Republican voters if they were evangelical or born-again. The data revealed a significant difference between the voting patterns of Republican evangelicals in Iowa and New Hampshire. In Iowa, Mike Huckabee dominated, claiming 46 percent of evangelicals' support, with no other candidate receiving even 20 percent. In New Hampshire McCain, Romney and Huckabee split the evangelical vote almost evenly. The disparity of these results suggests that evangelical voters' behavior may not conform to expectations, which further shows the need to measure it in both parties.

With voters entering polling sites in Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina in the coming days and weeks and Super Tuesday following shortly thereafter, it is imperative for you to remedy the imbalance in your exit polling immediately. Evangelicalism is not a monolithic movement that fits neatly into one party. For the sake of accuracy and dispelling shopworn stereotypes, we urge you to allow all evangelicals an opportunity to be represented in your surveys and polling data.

Dr. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland A Church Distributed

David Neff, Editor, Christianity Today

Rev. Jim Wallis, Founder, Sojourners

Randy Brinson, Founder, Redeem the Vote

Paul Corts, President, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities

Dr. David P. Gushee, Distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University

Brian McLaren, Author, Founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church

Randall Balmer, Professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University

Glen Stassen, Lewis B. Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary

*Institutional affiliations are given for identification purposes only.

But apparently the rhetoric didn't work, and now he's being criticized for not attempting to end hardcore hotel movie offerings during his time on the Marriott board. Industrywide, estimates for hotel profit from pornography go up to $500 million.

Knowing Romney's love of excuses, maybe he can try this one that a Marriott spokesman gave a few years back: "You're asking me if nudity is involved? I'm not a critic so it's not like I can tell you piece by piece what's going on."

Or maybe he can just say he installed a special shield to protect hotel-goers from the pornography on their television screens.

Maybe that excuse is next, but right now he's simply clamming up and hoping it will go away. It looks like the hypocrisy will just be too much for this to simply go without notice.

The National Association of Evangelicals [NAE] has affirmed its stance on caring for the environment -- indirectly rebuffing complaints that a staffer was too environmentally friendly -- and endorsed a statement condemning torture. [...] Instead of addressing the request related to Cizik, the board members reaffirmed an earlier document on "an evangelical call to public engagement," which embraces care for the creation. They also affirmed a document titled "An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protesting Human Rights in an Age of Terror."

Many have made the case that these are great moral issues that we must work to address. The entire statement by the NAE, available at Raw Story, concludes:

[...] we renounce the resort to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees, call for the extension of procedural protections and human rights to all detainees, seek clear government-wide embrace of the Geneva Conventions, including those articles banning torture and cruel treatment of prisoners, and urge the reversal of any U.S. government law, policy, or practice that violates the moral standards outlined in this declaration.

With the NAE representing roughly 45,000 churches across America, this is a important event.

A former deputy director of the White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is charging that many members of the Bush administration privately dismiss its conservative Christian allies as “boorish” and “nuts.”

The former deputy director, David Kuo, an evangelical Christian conservative, makes the accusations in a newly published memoir, “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction” (Free Press), about his frustration with what he described as the meager support and political exploitation of the program.

“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’ ” Mr. Kuo writes.

In an interview, Mr. Kuo’s former boss, James Towey, now president of St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., said he had never encountered such cynicism or condescension in the White House, and he disputed many of the assertions in Mr. Kuo’s account.

Still, Mr. Kuo’s statements, first reported Wednesday evening on the cable channel MSNBC, come at an awkward time for Republicans in the midst of a midterm election campaign in which polls show little enthusiasm among the party’s conservative Christian base.

While many conservative Christians considered President Bush “a brother in Christ,” Mr. Kuo writes, “for most of the rest of the White House staff, evangelical leaders were people to be tolerated, not people who were truly welcomed.”

The political affairs office headed by Karl Rove was especially “eye-rolling,” Mr. Kuo’s book says. It says staff members in that office “knew ‘the nuts’ were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness.”

Without naming names, the book says staff members complained that politically involved Christians were “annoying,” “tiresome” or “boorish.”

This really shouldn't be a surprise, aide to convicted Republican super-lobbyist, Jack Abramboff, Michael Scanlon, already gave us a taste of the GOP disdain for the right-wing base they pander to:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

Together we are committed to:

• Caring for the Poor and Sick – The Democratic Party understands the moral responsibility to help those who are least able to care for themselves.
• Caring for the Earth – The global imperative to live as good stewards of the Earth is a priority for the Democratic Party. Democratic lawmakers are on the forefront of creating policies that harness our power to protect and sustain, rather than destroy, precious natural resources and the environment.
• Supporting Vulnerable Lives - Concerns for life in its earliest stages have found authentic champions among Democratic lawmakers who are sponsoring legislation to reduce the number of abortions by addressing the underlying social factors that lead to unintended pregnancies and by providing support to women, children and families.
• Welcoming the Stranger – Democrats believe all people are to be treated with care and respect. Comprehensive immigration reform is an equal matter of national security, economic prosperity and human dignity.
• Standing up against genocide – The Democratic Party takes the horrific and sweeping violence in Darfur and other parts of the globe against any people seriously and is standing up for immediate and deliberate actions to end genocide.

The Democratic National Committee’s Faith in Action initiative takes its commitment to push beyond rhetoric and open real dialogue on the challenges and moral obligations of our nation to govern with compassion and discernment.

Join us today to stay informed on issues that matter to the Evangelical community and check out the ways you can get involved in your community on PartyBuilder.