I'm not a big fan on the "wall" that's supposedly in place between church and state in this country because it's most commonly used to try to silence religious people. On a similar note, when Republicans talk about their faith (or even when they're not) the anti-religious left goes ape with sinister conspiracy theories and cries of "theocracy." When Democrats talk about their faith, it's usually seen as harmless lip service.

Last week there were a couple of situations that illustrated this double standard perfectly. The first occurred at a town-hall style meeting President Bush attended when someone asked him about end-times prophecy.

An exchange between President Bush and a Cleveland attorney who asked whether apocalyptic religious views color his decision-making on Iraq has added new fuel to the debate over the religious right's role in his administration.

Bush seemed flummoxed by the question Jan L. Roller asked after his Monday City Club speech, where he was defending his handling of the Iraq war.

Citing a newly released book called "American Theocracy" by former Nixon administration official Kevin Phillips, Roller asked whether Bush agrees with "prophetic Christians" who view the Iraq war and the rise of terrorism as "signs of the apocalypse," the end-of-the-world cataclysm described in the Bible's Book of Revelation.

"I haven't really thought of it that way," Bush told her after a long pause, adding that he hadn't previously heard the theory. "I guess I'm more of a practical fellow."

Which, unfortunately for conspiracy theorists, is true of the vast majority of Christians. The vast majority of churches deal with the book of Revelation in their Sunday morning services once a decade -- if then. I'd encourage all these conspiracy theorists to go to some evangelical church (and Bush isn't even an evangelical) and check out what they really are teaching Sunday mornings.

But reality and politics are seldom the same, and that's where this Plain-Dealer article comes in.

The face-off between the red- jacketed defense lawyer and the bemused commander-in-chief has touched off new arguments over an old subject: conservative Christian influence over President Bush and the Republican Party.

Bush critics, including Phillips himself, contend the president feigned confusion. Had the president embraced the controversial views of his religious backers, the critics say, he would have alienated moderates.

What exactly are the "controversial views of his religious backers?" That what the book of Revelation describes will one day come true? That Jesus Christ will return? Your anti-Christian bias is showing!

While some Christians may make a hobby out of trying to match news reports to obscure wordings in Revelation, every Christian knows that there's nothing they can do to speed-up God's timeline -- even if they are president of the United States.

In stark contrast to the religion-based attack on President Bush last week, New York Democrat Sen. Hillary Clinton did a little Bible-based demonizing of Republicans -- with nary a word of concern from her left-wing base.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the Bible yesterday to criticize a stringent border security measure that, among other things, would make it a federal crime to offer aid to illegal immigrants.

"It is hard to believe that a Republican leadership that is constantly talking about values and about faith would put forth such a mean-spirited piece of legislation," she said of the measure, which was passed by the House of Representatives in December and mirrored a companion Senate bill introduced last week by Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the majority leader.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Just imagine the howls of outrage if a prominent Republican senator had charged the Democrats with wanting to "abort Baby Jesus" because the unplanned pregnancy (unplanned by Mary, not by God) would negatively affect her lifestyle and make her, an unwed mother, the object of scorn in her community.

The silence that accompanied Clinton's brazen and distasteful use of religion as a club against her political opponents was deafening.

Religion in the public sphere is only acceptable when it's used to further liberal policy goals. If you use religion to try to limit or outlaw abortion, then that's out of line. Welcome to the double-standard.