Al Gore convened a scientific summit in Washington, D.C., after evidence from NASA suggested there might once have been life on Mars. The vice president made sure to include several theologians in the talks. "We talked about life on Mars and what it means to people of faith," says one participant.

Regardless of whom Gore or Bush picks to be his running mate, one matter seems clear: God will truly be either man's copilot.

To ignore that for both men the most important thing in their lives is their personal relationship with God would be a sin of secularism -- a not uncommon, nor unfounded, critique of the media by religious leaders. After all, wouldn't the word of God likely have as much sway with Bush and Gore as the opinions of Condoleezza Rice or Carter Eskew?

Not in 100 years -- since William McKinley's successful race against William Jennings Bryan in 1900 -- have both major candidates for president been so outspoken about their Christianity. Asked which "political philosopher" he most admires during a GOP debate last December, Bush replied, "Christ, because he changed my heart." On the stump, Gore invokes the existential question on the braceleted wrists of thousands of Christian teens -- "WWJD" ("What Would Jesus Do?") -- and professes that "faith is the center of my life."

And Gore and Bush are not just devout Christians -- Gore, a Baptist; Bush, a Methodist -- they both describe themselves by what, in the past, has been a loaded description: born-again. As Fred Barnes, senior editor at the Weekly Standard, recalls, it was considered by many political observers "very weird" when Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter called himself a born-again Christian upon entering the presidential race.

Of course, regardless of what the media thought, Carter won. Faith is much more accepted far from the confines of the Beltway; a 1997 poll from the Barna Research Group showed that 43 percent of Americans consider themselves born-again Christians. And while the term "born-again" may still conjure up primitive images of pious Christian zeal in cosmopolitan circles of New York and Los Angeles, the term still seems less controversial today than it once did.

In the 1980s, the born-again term has lost its "cultural home" and started to become "increasingly ambiguous," according to Graham Walker, an associate professor of politics at Catholic University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Bush seems to follow a traditional definition: When he found faith in Jesus Christ in 1985 he was born-again, and has since led a new life -- one that is free of, among other things, alcohol.

Gore has also described himself as a born-again Christian fairly recently, and maintains a broad definition of exactly what that means: An aide says that Gore means it as more of a philosophical coming to terms with his religious upbringing. But there is reason to believe that for Gore there's much more there than what he talks about on the stump.

Both candidates benefit from the term's new "fuzziness," Walker says. "When Jimmy Carter said he was a born-again Christian in 1976, he was taking a political risk," Walker says. Gore and Bush are not. "I wonder in both cases whether they are deliberately or inadvertently profiting from the ambiguity of that word," Walker says. "The term may be highly serviceable because of its ambiguity." Gore can use the term to appeal to the religious right without turning off the left, since even modern agnostics and secularists now use the term to describe their coming to terms with their spirituality, in a way that has nothing to do with Jesus. Bush, meanwhile, can use the term to satisfy his core conservative constituency without alienating possible crossover voters.

So yes, Bush and Gore use Jesus to their benefit. At a time when religion and spirituality are enjoying a new popularity, with a Gallup poll showing that 96 percent of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, both candidates' faiths are like any other key line in their bios. And only the most cynical could believe either man is insincere in his frequent exaltations. Both seem genuinely religious. But while both men are proudly born-again, their beliefs are quite different, and not only has their faith taken the two men in very different directions as politicians, the vastly different ways they see religion and Jesus would make them very different presidents.

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