For the progressive left, social activism grounded in faith and theology crested in the 1960s.

In Barack Obama, Democrats have put forth a man of strong religious faith who is comfortable connecting his spiritual life to his public role as a policymaker.

There's a wider agenda that speaks to what the Democratic Party has historically stood for, which are economic rights for those who are struggling in the middle class, concern for the poor, for economic justice for those who are marginalized in our society.

When I worked at the White House in the mid-1990s, I would not have dreamed of sharing my beliefs on faith with my colleagues.

For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the '60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change.

Maybe there'll be a simple, innocent explanation. I don't think so, because I think we would have offered that up already.

President Bush had an opportunity tonight to say, 'Look ... things aren't going very well in Iraq and we did make some miscalculations and misjudgments there,' but he is so stubbornly arrogant - he just sticks with that same formula that he has in talking about the war on Iraq that just defies the reality that we all see on the ground.