I've written repeatedly that the Democratic Party is at best a little antagonistic toward religious believers. At worst, the Democrats are too often seen as downright hostile and unserious.

During the 2004 election, presidential hopeful Howard Dean tried to reach out to religious believers by sharing the fact that his favorite New Testament book was Job and releasing a Dec. 25 holiday message that mentioned neither Jesus nor Christmas.

Defenders of the Democrats on the issue have pointed out that Bill Clinton often spoke of his faith and demonstrated that he knew that Job was in the Old Testament. Well, that may have hurt more than it helped, because it was pretty obvious before he took office and more obvious after the Lewinsky scandal broke, that Clinton was great at talking the talk, but pretty bad at walking the walk.

Republicans aren't a whole lot better. I read last week that of the leading contenders for the GOP nomination for president in 2008, only the Mormon -- Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- has had only one wife. But while the GOP certainly doesn't set a Jesus-like example of moral values, they aren't nearly as anti-religious as Democrats.

It may simply come down to rhetoric. Democrats continually slam the "religious right" -- meaning religious people that don't agree with Democrats on policy issues. But you don't ever hear Republicans slamming the "religous left." Republicans will slam Democrats for their policies, but they won't attach the religious beliefs to the attacks. The Democrat's t-shirts post Nov. 2004 showing the blue states as "Jesusland" didn't help the perception of the Democrat Party either.

Along those lines, the Pew Forum came out with a survey that shows that more people believe that Republicans are friendly towards Religion than Democrats. (There are a variety of interesting numbers in the survey, give the entire thing a read.)

Of course, the media reported on this survey, but it got drastically different treatment depending on the paper.

The New York Times: "In Poll, G.O.P. Slips as a Friend of Religion"

The Washington Times: "Few see Democrats as friendly to religion"

We'll leave it to Powerline's John Hinderaker to analyze the discrepancy.

Does anyone sense an agenda here? As for which headline more fairly represents the poll's results, the Pew survey found that 47 percent of respondents think the Republicans are "friendly toward religion," as opposed to "neutral" or "unfriendly," while only 26 percent consider the Democrats "friendly." And, while it's true, as the NYT headline says, that the number of people who say the Republicans are friendly toward religion is lower than last year, the Democrats' figure is lower, too. And over the last three years, the Democrats' "friendly" percentage has fallen from 42 to 26, a far more drastic decline.

And it's not just the headline, check out the New York Times story itself:

“It’s unclear how directly this will translate into voting behavior,” Mr. [John] Green [senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum] said, “but this is a baseline indicator that religious conservatives see the party they’ve chosen to support as less friendly to religion than they used to.”

He speculated that religious conservatives could feel betrayed that some Republican politicians recently voted to back stem cell research, and that a Republican-dominated Congress failed to pass an amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

“At the minimum, there will be less good will toward the Republican Party by these conservative religious groups, and a disenchantment that the party will be able to deliver on its promises,” Mr. Green said.

There was no mention of what the poll meant for Democrats who have been trying to reach out to religious believers.

This is why you've got to look at the actual source documents and you should take any refusal by the mainstream media to provide them as a warning sign.