Religion

Perhaps it's because I look gullible, confused or in special need of spiritual guidance. Maybe it's because I hang out alone in public places. But, since I was a teenager, I have been a prime target for proselytizers of all stripes.

When the mortars began to explode overhead, the mental patients scattered like crows. On this brilliant afternoon last April, they’d been lining up in the courtyard of Mogadishu’s only functioning mental hospital, waiting for their anti-psychotics. “Doctor” Habeb--a man with six weeks of volunteer training--reached into a wooden trunk and handed out blister packs and syringes marked Phenobarbital, Risperidone, Chlorpromazine. But by the thud in their guts, the patients could tell how close the shells were falling; the mortars’ high whine and crackle made the drugs suddenly seem secondary.

In the desert swelter of southern Pakistan, the scent of rose­water mixed with a waft of hashish smoke. Drummers pounded away as celebrants swathed in red pushed a camel bedecked with garlands, tinsel and multihued scarfs through the heaving crowd. A man skirted past, grinning and dancing, his face glistening like the golden dome of a shrine nearby. "Mast Qalandar!" he cried. "The ecstasy of Qalandar!"

Attacking a religious organization rarely works, said Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a political think tank in southern California.

"In fact, it's counterproductive," said Mathews, who supports gay marriage. He said he understands why opponents of the ballot measure would target the LDS Church.

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In early September, when Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, announced that her unwed seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant, many liberals were shocked, not by the revelation but by the reaction to it. They expected the news to dismay the evangelical voters that John McCain was courting with his choice of Palin. Yet reports from the floor of the Republican Convention, in St. Paul, quoted dozens of delegates who seemed unfazed, or even buoyed, by the news.

Forget Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. These atheists du jour have nothing on the most famous anti-theist of all time. Good old Karl Marx is still the most eloquent and thoughtful nonbeliever, and his "religion is the opium of the masses" is still the best one-liner in the business.

There is renewed interest in the power and role of faith in America. We see candidates talking about it in campaigns. But how does it influence how public servants in the trenches think about their work?

On September 11, we cannot help but think about the power of religion to shape our world. In the past few years, religion has had a revival in America. It has been catapulted to the front pages of our newspapers, splashed on our television screens and most recently, at the forefront of the presidential campaigns. Religion’s rise to the surface does not need to be a negative, divisive matter. Historically, the U.S. has always had a degree of pluralism, a quality that has helped Americans, as a whole, work through their religious differences.

In his first public event since the release of his book, Against Us: The New Face of America's Enemies in the Muslim World, ABC News' Senior Foreign Correspondent Jim Scuitto looks at how -- seven years after 9/11 -- anti-American extremism has become mainstream thinking in the Muslim world.

Faith in the Democratic Platform

It is interesting at the start of the Democratic Convention to note that the draft platform the delegates are beginning to discuss says more about what a faith initiative will not be than what it will be in an Obama administration.