The Ethics and Public Policy Center hosted its semi-annual conference on religion and public life with the nation's leading journalists--"Toward an Understanding of Religion, Politics, and the 2004 Election," at the Pier House Resort in Key West, Florida. The conference began Sunday, May 23 and concluded Tuesday, May 25, 2004. This program is supported by a generous grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts.

As the 2004 election draws nearer, and conflict continues to plague U.S. military efforts in Iraq, the enduring influences of religion cannot be ignored at home or abroad. Americans continue to be deeply divided about what our culture should look like, as well as about what role the United States can and should play in the world. The fault lines of cultural conflict usually are found to lie close to questions of religion and its proper place. These questions have deep historical roots that we will explore on two fronts—American politics and culture, and the responsibilities of the United States in international conflicts.

At the Key West meeting, three eminent scholars helped us to better understand the religious, historical, ideological, and political forces currently in play.

During our two days in Key West, three presentations were given: on radical Islam and international relations, by Steven Simon; on "The Transformation of American Religion and its Political Implications," by Alan Wolfe; on "The 2004 Election: The Polls and the Religion Factor," by John Green.

Steven Simon is senior analyst at the RAND Corporation. Prior to joining RAND, he was the Assistant Director and Carol Deane Senior Fellow for U.S. Security Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and was the Senior Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council, reviewing new terrorist phenomena (such as increasing technical and operational competence, the drive to obtain WMD, etc.). While at the National Security Council, he was also Director for Global Issues and Multilateral Affairs. He also worked in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the Department of State as Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and as the Director of the Office of Policy Analysis. With Daniel Benjamin, Mr. Simon is co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror (Random House, 2002), and co-editor of Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change (Oxford/IISS, 2003).

Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His most recent books include The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith (Free Press, 2003) and An Intellectual in Public (University of Michigan Press, 2003). He is the author or editor of more than ten other books including Marginalized in the Middle (University of Chicago Press, 1997), and One Nation, After All (Penguin Press, 1998), Moral Freedom: The Search for Virtue in a World of Choice (W. W. Norton, 2001), and School Choice: The Moral Debate (Princeton University Press, 2002). Both One Nation, After All and Moral Freedom were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year.

John Green is the director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, and professor of political science at the University of Akron. His most recent books include The Christian Right in American Politics (Georgetown, 2003), Prayers in the Precincts: The Christian Right in the 1998 Elections (Georgetown, 2000), The State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary Party Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999; in its third edition), Multiparty Politics in America (Rowman & Littlfield,1996), The Politics of Ideas: Intellectual Challenges to the Major Parties (Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), and Politics, Professionalism, and Power (Rowman & Littlefield, 1994). He is also co-author of The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (University Press of Kansas, 1997) and Religion and the Culture Wars (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).