An evocative piece of Spanish Catholic history is on display at the Meadows Museum in Dallas — the altarpiece from the Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigoin Spain’s Salamanca province. You can see our story about it here .

It features 26 surving panels from the cathedral’s main altarpiece, each one a stunning work of art in its own right.

The pieces were painted between 1480 and 1500 during a searing era in Spanish and Church history: America was being discovered, the Moors were being defeated, the Jews were being expelled from Spain and the Inquisition was sharpening the tools of its ruthless trade.

X-ray analysis by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth has uncovered some of the “original” drafts which show how the paintings changed from start to finish.

But there is plenty of fascinating detail in the finished products. In the “Creation of Eve” (above), a richly-dress Jesus rather than God is at the center of the picture.

“Acacius and the 10,000 Martyrs on Mount Ararat” has one man nailed into the ground rather than the crosses from which his breathren hang. One of his thumbs is oddly on the wrong side of his hand — an error or something symbolic?

This magnificent exhibit runs until July 27.

A group of mostly centrist U.S. evangelicals released a lengthy manifesto on Wednesday which called for the movement to pull back from explicit partisan political activity, saying faith was being used to express “political points that have lost touch with biblical truth.”

Leading figures on the conservative Religious Right, such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, were pointedly not asked to sign the document — a reflection of some of the divisions emerging in the U.S. evangelical movement, which numbers over 60 million by some estimates.

“I agree that evangelical Christians have become too aligned with the Republican Party which has taken them for granted,” Perkins told Reuters, adding that he saw some good stuff in the manifesto.

But he said “it was like it was written for ivory tower Christians, like they want to rid the world of evil but don’t want to get involved in the issues to do it.”

Divisions among U.S. Evangelicals — which are becoming more visible or vocal but have long been bubbling below the surface — have taken many forms.

Most publicly, they include a shift in emphasis among some evangelical leaders from the focus on culture issues such as abortion to a broader social agenda that includes calls to action on poverty and the environment

Most centrist evangelicals remain opposed to abortion rights, which they increasingly see as a social justice issue, but it is not their main focus.

The Religious Right, which has been the bedrock of conservative evangelical support for the Republican Party in recent election cycles, has also called for a broader agenda — but insists on tackling the issues that many of its supporters care deeply about.

This includes retaining an uncompromising and very public opposition to abortion and gay rights.

What do you think? Do you think the U.S. evangelical movement has become too politicized?

DALLAS - Has Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton improbably emerged as the favorite of the "Guns and God" crowd?

The U.S. media and blogosphere has been ablaze with speculation that conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh may have contributed to Clinton's narrow victory in Tuesday's Indiana primary over Barack Obama by urging Republicans to vote for the former first lady.

The speculation is that the "Rush for Hillary" is seen as a way to extend the Democratic nomination battle and further damage the eventual winner.

Limbaugh has also said in the past that he thought Obama needed to be "bloodied up politically, and it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don't have the stomach for it."

Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, speaking to reporters on Obama's plane on the way to Chicago from his rally on Tuesday night in North Carolina, said he saw a Rush factor at play in Clinton's win.

He said Clinton ought to "call a press conference and thank Rush Limbaugh for the victory." He said the margin of victory for Clinton was so narrow, there is a good chance Limbaugh might have tipped the scales for her. 

"Eleven percent of the total electorate were Republicans. She got 52 percent of those. A large percentage of them said they would favor McCain in a race against Clinton." 

Indiana has one of the more open primaries which allows independents and Republicans to also request a Democratic ballot on the day they vote.

Do political bedfellows get any stranger than this?

(With additional reporting by Caren Bohan) 

Click here for more campaign coverage. 

Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has an intriguing idea: is there a “religionome” similar to the human genome and can scientists map it? He raised this idea at a recent Pew Forum conference on religion and public life in Key West, Florida, where he discussed the topic of why belief in God persists.

Newberg’s work focuses, among other things, on his view that we are biologically driven to find meaning in our lives. He argues that our brains have the capacity to create and perpetuate systems of belief that take us beyond our basic survival needs. These beliefs are biologically rooted in the brain, he thinks, but are also given form by our peers, parents and society.

Newberg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Psychiatry, Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and director and co-founder of the Center for Spirituality and the Neurosciences, all at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He talked with Reuters on the sidelines of the conference, organized by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, to flesh out his vision.

“If you think of it in the context of the human genome project, what we are talking about is finding a way of mapping all of the different aspects of religion, the different traditions and practices and experiences that people have,” he said.

“And by mapping it, I would not just be talking about the biology of it but trying to connect the biology with what people are actually experiencing, feeling, believing and therefore getting as full as possible a real understanding of what religion and spirituality are really all about for people.”

I asked him to further explain — in layman’s terms — what he saw as the biological basis of belief.

“What I think we have seen in the research we have done, what I would what to do in any kind of religionome type of study, would be to try and find the overall pattern of changes, the pattern of activity in the different structures in the brain that are involved with all the different types of processes that people consider to be religious or spiritual.”

“To expand on that a little bit, I have tended to find that there is a pattern of structures, a group of structures in the brain that seem to be involved whenever people engage in some kind of religious or spiritual activity. So what we tend to find is that there are a set of structures that are activated or inactivated depending on what a person is doing, how they’re doing it, what they’re trying to experience … while the pattern is a little bit different in each type of practice, it always seems to involve the same structures. It just involves them differently.”

The more we learn about the human body, the more some scientists search for a “God gene” or a religious zone in the brain or some other physical basis to account for the phenomenon of faith. Do you think science can explain faith?

KEY WEST, Fla. - Rice University professor Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, shared on Tuesday what he said were his eight misconceptions about the evangelical movement before he began researching his influential book.

1. His first fallacy: "I assumed they (evangelicals) had succeeded because they were united," he told  the "Faith Angle" conference organized by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The reality: he argued evangelicals had sharp divisions but their burning in the belly belief that something is fundamentally wrong with the world drives them and means they can take political set-backs on the chin. 

2. He said his second fallacy was the assumption that "2004 was the pinnacle of evangelical influence in U.S. politics":

But he said many people he had spoken to said they were disappointed that they had voted for President George W. Bush but in their view received nothing in return. He said the biggest evangelical policy triumph was the 1998 passage of the International Religious Freedom Act, which was aimed at promoting religious freedom as a core objective of U.S. foreign policy and evangelicals had lobbied hard to get approved.

3.  "I thought there was a select group who were kingmakers in the Republican Party like James Dobson (of Focus on the Family)."

The reality: he said what he learned was that it was a movement with strong or very public leaders but they did not have make or break status within the Republican Party.

4. Lindsay said he also assumed that the centers of evangelical power were in places like Colorado Springs, Colo., headquarters for influential conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family.

But he said the movement's centers of power were actually the traditional ones like New York and Los Angeles and that the sharpest evangelical divide was between what he called the "cosmopolitan evangelicals and populists".  The populists he said are culture warriors embattled against secular society while the cosmopolitans  want a place at the table but want "their faith to be seen as reasonable".

5.  He said he had assumed that the new issues publicly embraced by the movement such as action on the environment "signaled a party realignment."

But he said evangelicals are still center/right and among the most loyal of Republicans.

6. He said while the domestic realm was important to evangelicals the really interesting emerging evangelical story is in foreign affairs and the movement's enthusiasm for foreign aid and investment. 

7. Lindsay also said that he thought church life drove evangelical political activity but that much of the real action was in the "para-church" sector such as universities.

8.  Finally, he said he assumed politics had been the main focus for most evangelicals.
But many of the people he interviewed articulated a view that politics was "downstream of culture."

- Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Bush at a White House event highlighting National Prayer Day earlier this month)

Young U.S. evangelicals are even more opposed to abortion rights than older evangelicals but their position has different roots that stem from broader notions of social justice, a conference on religion and politics heard on Monday.

Michael Gerson, a former top aide to President George W. Bush who is now on the Council on Foreign Relations, told the conference in Key West, Florida, that “younger evangelicals are more pro-life than their parents. But they tend to view it as a social justice issue.”   

This will raise eyebrows in liberal American or secular European audiences, which view abortion rights as a key component of women’s rights and see attempts to roll them back as reactionary and even atavistic — and hardly linked to notions of social justice.

But the U.S. evangelical movement has been shifting its tone on the abortion issue in recent years and framing it in the language of social justice — a shift that coincides with a broadening of its agenda to include concern about global poverty and demands for action on climate change. 

Some leading and politically engaged evangelicals such as former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee have compared today’s anti-abortion movement to the anti-slavery crusades of the 18th and 19th centuries, which were often led by evangelicals.

It remains to be seen how this framing of the debate works but there is little doubt that it is an interesting new development on the front lines of America’s culture wars and one to keep an eye on.

The conference Gerson was addressing was organized by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.  It found in a survey last year that “70 percent of younger white evangelicals favor ‘making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion,’ compared with 55 percent of older white evangelicals and 39 percent of young Americans overall who share this view.”

What do George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton have in common, besides a shared address in Washington? (With dates that did not overlap of course).

They actually have a shared faith: The United Methodist Church.

This may surprise many people, given the fact that their politics are polar opposites. The anti-abortion rights Bush strikes many as a Southern Baptist in everything but name; the pro-choice Clinton is seldom associated with religion though she has been actively courting the faith vote as of late.

As its general conference in Fort Worth discussed issues such as its take on human sexuality, Scott Jones, the resident bishop for the Kansas area, said differences of opinion were in the church’s “DNA” but “We are united in our mission to transform the world.”

“I would point out that Hillary and George Bush have one crucial thing in common… That is a a strong desire to make the world a better place. That’s deep in our Methodist DNA also,” he said.

With about eight million members in the United States the church is America’s third largest denomination and can draw on a rich history of social activism which has included a big role in the anti-slavery movement.

GRANTHAM, Pa. - There was a moment of levity on Sunday night when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was asked at a nationally televised faith forum whether she believed "God wants you to be president?"

" Well, I could be glib and say we'll find out," Clinton said to laughter from the audience.

"But I -- I don't presume anything about God. I believe, you know, Abraham Lincoln was right in admonishing us not to act as though we knew God was on our side," she said.

The forum was held at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, just over a week before the state's crucial primary pitting Clinton against Barack Obama, who also addressed the event. Candidates were asked questions about their faith and how it influenced their positions on a range of issues from poverty to abortion.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: REUTERS/David DeNoma (Sen. Hillary Clinton campaigning in Pittsburgh, April 10, 2008)

The Mormon faith — or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as it is officially called — has a “fundamental” PR problem.

It may have renounced polygamy over a century ago but the breakaway sects which continue to practice plural marriage are the ones that often catch the public eye, leading to the popular misconception that all Mormon men have, or strive to have, more than one (often underage) wife.

This was driven home to me as investigators late last week swooped on a polygamist compound in a remote part of west Texas in response to an abuse complaint.

The compound belongs to followers of jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and is linked to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which broke away from the main branch of the faith decades ago.

Over 400 children were yanked from the Texas facility over the course of the weekend and into the early part of this week, providing a riveting spectacle in a dusty corner of the state.

Television footage showed young girls in long, apparently homemade “pioneer dresses” boarding buses. Some who looked to be in their early teens carried infant children. Texas child welfare officials said it was their biggest operation ever.

As all of this was unfolding my wife happened to mention to a friend of hers in South Africa — a friend who is well-educated, a journalist and a devout Christian — that I was covering the story. Her friend’s response?  “Those Mormons, they’re weird. I don’t answer the door when they knock,” she said. My wife said as far as her friend was concerned, Mormons were Mormons and that was that.

Of course, the mainstream Mormon church, which claims a worldwide membership of around 13 million, is the one sending missionaries around the globe to knock on doors and spread the faith.

The renegade polygamist sects whose followers number several thousand (some estimates are as high as 40,000 or more) are not knocking on doors in Johannesburg. But the perception is clearly there: Mormons are the funny fellows taking multiple wives and living in isolated retreats in remote patches of America.

In places like Texas, the mainstream Mormon faith — based in Salt Lake City, Utah — has to contend with plenty of suspicion anyway.

Southern Baptists and other evangelicals widely regard Mormonism as an almost sinister cult which is successfully competing for souls among the faithful. They regard Joseph Smith, who founded the faith in New York state in 1830, as a false prophet. Southern Baptists are taught in Sunday School to be wary of that “knock on the door” from Mormon missionaries.

Against this backdrop the last thing the mainstream LDS needs is more bad press stemming from its fundementalist kin. The Texas media is abuzz about the probe and court documents alleging a compound rife with sexual abuse and girls being forced into “spiritual marriage” after reaching puberty.

One also gets the impression that Texas authorities were chomping at the bit to take the place down, given the scale of the operation in response to complaints allegedly made by one person.

But it has all served to reinforce popular stereotypes of the Mormon faith — and that must be causing discomfit in Salt Lake City.

Move over Religious Right: you’re getting squeezed by the evangelical center.

That is one of the central points of a new book by David P. Gushee entitled “The Future of Faith in American Politics”.

To Gushee, the evangelical center combines much of the theology of the Religious Right with the social concerns of the left, give it a broad engagement in many of the pressing issues of our day.

Gushee does not demonise the Religious Right - which he says is simply exercising its citizenship responsibilities in a free society - but he does critique its entanglement with the Republican Party, its hectoring tone and what he sees as its narrow focus on issues like abortion and gay marriage.

But he also takes issue with the left’s silence on or reluctance to act on such issues.

The emerging evangelical center includes activists such as Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs with the National Association of Evangelicals, and Florida mega-pastor Joel Hunter.

Evangelicals in this vein share the right’s opposition to abortion but also press for action on issues like climate change and global poverty.

Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University, is himself firmly in the evangelical centrist camp: but this book is written with that disclosure and its stated purpose is “to stake a claim” to this emerging evangelical center.

Last week we interviewed the authors of a new book charting a way forward for the Religious Right by Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson. This week Gushee shares his thoughts on his book and other matters with Reuters:

Q: You contrast an emerging evangelical center with both the Religious Right and the Religious Left. Do you think these other movements have reached their peak?

A: I think that the Religious Right as it has existed for the last 30 years has definitely reached its peak and is declining. I think if you understand the Religious Left as the old mainline then it is definitely in trouble. There is some creative ferment on that side but on the whole they are certainly not thriving. The evangelical left of Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, folks like that, is showing lots of vigour right now. As of today it seems to me that the center and left are both stronger than they’ve ever been and the right is fading and looking for some fresh ways to reframe itself.

Q: How do you see the Religious Right reframing itself?

A: I think there are some fractures emerging among the people who identify themselves as Religious Right. I think some are starting to deemphasise partisan politics to a certain extent. Others are attempting to reframe their message. I think the new book by Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson (mentioned above) is a reframing effort. A lot of the things I critique in my book, they say ‘you’re right we need to work on those things.’ Things like disentangling from the Republican Party, having a more positive and less negative kind of tone, emphasising a broader range of issues. I think there is a feeling on the Religious Right that those things are a problem for them.

“One of the interesting things about the Republican presidential race was John McCain. McCain ends up as the winner despite bitter opposition from some of the most visible Religious Right leaders like James Dobson. And one reason he did emerge as the winner is because his stance is more evangelical center. You will probably have two presidential candidates this fall who are center-right or center-left and the fringes have lost. Which I think is good news for America.”

Q: Do you think this fading of the fringes is a reflection of what is going on in America in general?

A: In terms of the broader culture I think there is a deep exhaustion with culture wars.

Q: Why is abortion such an important issue to evangelicals? Does your opposition to it not make it seem like you are part of a backlash against broader women’s rights?

A: I think this grief over this state of affairs in American culture is very real. Now often it has been unaccompanied by similar compassion for women and families. Grief for the 15-year-old who is pregnant and desperate; grief for the woman who has been raped; grief for a society in which men and women have sex but women disproportionately bear the consequences if pregnancy happens. Sometimes evangelicals have been insensitive to the needs of women and the rights of women. And our rhetoric has been baby-centered rather than centered on all who are in that situation.