[promoted to the front page. And a big welcome to Pastor Dan]

This is an edited copy of this post on faithforward.

Joe Lieberman is hanging out with Sam Brownback and the Richard Scaife sockpuppet Institute on Religion and Democracy. The Reuters article is basically a hack rework of the IRD press release:

Evangelical Christians, known for opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage, flexed their political muscle on Thursday and one said Democrats suffer from a “religion gap” at the polls.

“The religious left is political smoke and mirrors,” Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, said in a statement read at a gathering of the National Association of Evangelicals. “It simply doesn’t have a significant voting base.”

Citing polls showing strong evangelical support for Republican President Bush (news – web sites) in the 2004 election, Knippers, who couldn’t attend the meeting, said in her statement: “The Democratic Party needs to begin to close its religion gap. Its leaders would do well to seek out advice from religious leaders who have a genuine constituency.”

Does Lieberman even pretend to be a Democrat anymore?

Lieberman talked about his commitment to stemming global warming, and the place of religious faith in the U.S. government.

“I think your presence, your advocacy on a whole host of issues is not only welcome but necessary and classically American,” Lieberman said. “America itself is a faith-based initiative.”

For more on the IRD, see here, and tikkun’s excellent diary here.