When American Christianity split into fundamentalists and modernists about 100 years ago, the fundamentalists held onto the term born-again.

"It meant someone who in some conscious fashion had identified the Bible as the inerrant word of God," Walker says. "Someone who acknowledged that he was falling short of truth and the moral precepts in the Bible, and someone who had personally accepted Jesus Christ into his innermost self, believing Jesus' death on the cross satisfies the penalty for his sins."

Gore and Bush seem to embody this fracture of Christianity, with Gore as the modernist and Bush as the fundamentalist.

Where Bush's adherence to the New Testament has gotten him in some hot water, it is precisely the opposite situation that has theological conservatives wondering about the sincerity of Gore's religiousness. "Bush seems to know the vocabulary" of born-again Christians more, Walker says, "and he uses it more frequently and with greater comfort than does Gore. Al Gore made a few comments about it, but he has never made it real clear what he means by being a born-again."

Walker says that the major reason some conservatives question Gore's claim to be born-again is his position on gay and lesbian rights. "While it's true that most conservatives regard abortion as a touchstone issue, the Scriptures don't speak to it so directly," he says. However, Walker says, "the Bible speaks so unflinchingly of the moral wrong of homosexual acts." For Gore to support gay rights like domestic partnerships clearly shows "a real dissonance between his policy positions and the Bible. As someone who claims to be a born-again Christian ... yet nevertheless so vigorously and publicly stakes out such contrary positions, is cause for at least wonder about the legitimacy of his claim to be a born-again Christian."

Clearly, Walker says, Gore's use of the term is one that comes without a strict interpretation of the Bible "as the universal sense of right and wrong."

Voters looking for a candidate whose word comes directly from the Bible would probably prefer congressional candidate Gore to presidential candidate Gore. It's not exactly news that Gore's positions on some issues have changed as he's segued from Tennessee parochialism. As Newsweek's Bill Turque points out in his book "Inventing Al Gore," as a 1976 congressional candidate Gore called homosexuality "abnormal" and said, "I don't believe a woman's freedom to live her own life, in all cases, outweighs the fetus' right to live."

Today, however, two of the veep's biggest supporters are the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay and lesbian rights lobby, and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

Gore is also far more measured when he does speak in moral terms. When asked about President Clinton's dalliances with a 21-year-old White House intern, Gore would turn to an altogether different lesson of Christianity. "I'm taught in my religious tradition to hate the sin and love the sinner," he has said.

While Olasky and Walker would probably be hard-pressed to dispute this particular quote, they do seem to regard theological liberals as inconsistent. Walker says that the modernists' attempt "to be both Christian and modern" comes only "by twisting Scriptures and discarding them."

For Gore, there's also been some criticism that he's only cited Scripture when it has proven most convenient. When Gore told Lesley Stahl last year on "60 Minutes" that he was born-again -- right before the Democratic primaries -- some in his opponent's camp thought it was a bit much.

"You could make the case that Gore did a calculated Christian striptease," says Richard Stengel, at the time a senior advisor to Bill Bradley. "Supposedly he was just divulging this, but it was obviously strategic," a way to shore up the support of religious Democrats.

But though it was a surprise to many, it wasn't disingenuous. "He has this born-again experience that he won't talk about, really, because he's afraid of it being misinterpreted," says Turque. "But he and Tipper were baptized in the late 1970s" by Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Crystal City, Va.

While it wouldn't be out of character for Gore to divulge personal information for professional gain, the truth is that Gore has long been a religious man. But he has usually cloaked his references to religion in the broadest, most inclusive terms possible.

When asked, during the December Democratic debate broadcast on ABC's "Nightline," how much information about religion politicians should share, Gore said, "I affirm my faith when I'm asked about it. But I always try to do so in a way that communicates absolute respect, not only for people who worship in a different way, but just as much respect for those who do not believe in God and who are atheists."

"Atheists," Gore said, "have just as much of a right to the public discourse as any ... people of any religious faith in this country."

Why are Gore's public proclamations of faith so painstakingly inclusive? The Right Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, a bishop in the Episcopal Church and a longtime friend of the Gore family, says she watched a young Al grow up with "a foot in Tennessee and a foot in Washington, D.C."

That included having one foot in Northeastern-elite Episcopalianism and another in Deep South Southern Baptism. Educated at St. Albans, an Episcopal school for boys in Washington, Gore spent summers in Carthage, Tenn., where the family attended the local Baptist church.

"His religious upbringing mirrored the split nature of the rest of his childhood," Turque says.

"There was the hot, fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist side, and the Episcopal side, which was cooler and less fevered," Turque says. "One of the things he came away with from Baptism was this sharply divided sense of right and wrong, this constant internal checking of whether you're in the right."

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