his was to be the year when religion was a warm and fuzzy subject in American politics.
George W. Bush named Jesus as his favorite philosopher. Al Gore spoke of a personal conversion experience and proclaimed himself born again. John McCain ran a campaign ad about the Christmas sermon he wrote for fellow prisoners of war in North Vietnam 30 years ago.
But something happened on the way to November.
The race, at least for the GOP nomination, tightened, and all of a sudden religion emerged as the wedge issue of the moment.
In an astonishing sequence of events, accusations of anti-Catholicism, anti-evangelicalism, even anti-Semitism are floating across the telephone lines and the airwaves of key states.
The Christian right, whose support has seemed indispensable to the success of modern GOP primary candidates, is being blasted by McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona. Catholic voters, a key constituency in many states, are being courted by Bush, the Republican governor of Texas.
Religion has always been a hot topic of conversation in American politics, but this year the level of rhetoric has intensified, and the accusations have reversed.
No longer are candidates tarred for their faith - as Democratic presidential candidates Alfred Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 were stigmatized for being Catholic - but for supposed intolerance of another's faith. The insinuation of religious bias has become a leading political weapon.
''As an exercise in American religious politics, I'd say it's all moving in the right direction, because it's bringing down the wrath of the community on people who in one way or another seem to be disrespecting someone else's religion,'' said Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford.
Silk's may be the rosiest gloss on the trend. Certainly, he would agree, the process has been anything but uplifting.
First, evangelist Pat Robertson, acting as a surrogate for Bush, records an ad complaining that McCain's campaign cochairman is a ''vicious bigot,'' hostile to the Christian right.
The cochairman, former senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, complains in turn that he is being targeted because he is Jewish.
McCain seizes on Bush's speech at fundamentalist Bob Jones University to suggest that Bush stood silent in the face of anti-Catholicism. And then, for good measure, he accuses Robertson of being an agent of intolerance and Bush of being an agent of Robertson.
The pattern has been repeated beyond the presidential campaign. In New York, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, accuses his opponent in the race for US Senate, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, of ''hostility toward America's religious traditions.'' And in Congress, Democrats make hay of Republicans' refusal to pick a Catholic as House chaplain.
Religious scholars tend to sneer at the level of the current debate, which the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal First Things, calls ''an exceedingly unedifying spectacle.''
Michael B. Barkey, a policy analyst at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Michigan, said, ''Most of what's been going on has been down and dirty politics, as they look for any stone to toss at the other candidate, and the stones that have been thrown have been quite nasty.''
''Some of this has the quality of name-calling for cheap political gain,'' said the Rev. Diane C. Kessler, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. ''Let's stop the name-calling and have a more enlightened conversation that elevates the candidates and the electorate in thinking about the proper role of religious convictions in the public sphere.''
The charges and countercharges fall into some familiar patterns of American political and religious history, as candidates try to win the sympathies and exploit the fears of different segments of a fragmented electorate.
''Religion has always been important in American politics - this just goes with the territory,'' said Boston University historian Robert Dallek.
But the tenor and volume of the rhetoric seem new.
The to-and-fro is clearly intended to move voter blocs. Bush appears at Bob Jones University in an appeal to South Carolina's Christian conservatives; McCain doesn't raise the anti-Catholicism accusation until heading to the primary in Michigan, with its many Catholic voters. Bush then apologizes for his handling of the Bob Jones appearance in a letter to Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, another state with many Catholic voters and an upcoming primary.
Each candidate has a supporter with strong credentials among religious conservatives: Former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed is an adviser to Bush, while former Family Research Council president Gary Bauer is supporting McCain after abandoning his own presidential campaign.
''They're playing particular religion cards that have to do with voting constituencies - conservative fundamentalists in South Carolina, Catholics in Michigan, Jews in New York - it's pretty much business as usual,'' said Silk of Trinity College.
The substance of the accusations - that Bush is anti-Catholic because he spoke at a university whose leadership espouses anti-Catholic views, or that McCain is anti-evangelical because his campaign chairman criticized some fundamentalists - impresses few in the world of religion.
In an interview, Boston's Cardinal Bernard F. Law dismissed the suggestion that Bush is anti-Catholic, pointing out that a variety of politicians have visited Bob Jones University but have not been accused of anti-Catholicism. ''I find it sort of bizarre,'' Law said. ''I think that place has some strange views, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't go there and speak.''
Neuhaus, the First Things editor and a Catholic priest, called the accusation of anti-Catholicism against Bush ''slanderous,'' saying, ''It was very clearly a mean-spirited political ploy by McCain or his people.'' He argues that the anti-Catholicism of Bob Jones University, which is premised on the notion that certain fundamental Catholic beliefs are false, is a complex proposition better debated by theologians than politicians.
''There is an important distinction between anti-Catholic bigotry and a theological position that in various forms has been going on for more than 400 years,'' Neuhaus said. ''They are not bigots, they're simply profoundly wrongheaded in their understanding of biblical tradition, but that's an argument neither Bush nor McCain is equipped to engage.''
Nonetheless, scholars say the name-calling could affect voters. Christian conservatives are an influential part of the Republican Party base, while Catholics and Jews form key constituencies, particularly in Northeastern states.
''Catholics may not know Bob Jones, but every Catholic knows the Protestants used to want to throw them out of the country,'' said Alan Wolfe, director of the Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
But Wolfe warns that trying to move voter blocs using religion is tricky. ''The damage to Bush with Catholics is real, but McCain runs into a problem if he is perceived as using this for personal gain, because it could backfire,'' Wolfe said. ''The thing about religion is it doesn't have an automatic link to any political view, and anyone who tries to harness it for political purposes is playing with fire. Americans love God and hate politics, and they don't want politicians messing with their religious beliefs.''
