At the Capitol in Washington, amid all the pomp and circumstance that Congress can muster, President Bush is expected to lay out his case tonight for a possible war.

At the same time, at Boston's storied Trinity Church, leaders of many of the state's religious traditions will be gathering in their full liturgical finery to make their own case, for peace.

The simultaneous events highlight an increasing tension between an openly religious president and the leaders of many of the nation's religions.

''I don't want to second-guess his discernment, but I think he's clearly misguided on this issue,'' said Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, who is organizing tonight's religious event, at which Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs plan to pray together against war. Asked whether he shouldn't be watching the president on TV tonight, Shaw said, ''I'm going to be right where I should be, in church, surrounded by the support of the faith community.''

Some religious leaders acknowledge disappointment that they seem unable, even in one of the most religious nations on earth, to more directly affect public policy. They are speaking out with something approaching a rare interfaith unity, and yet wonder if they are being heard. Among the sponsors of tonight's event is Bishop Susan W. Hassinger, who heads the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is President Bush's denomination.

''Our efforts haven't produced the desired result thus far, and obviously we're not where we would like to be at this stage,'' said the Rev. Diane C. Kessler, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. ''At the same time, I wonder if we already would be in a military conflict if the religious communities and others had not been as vigorous as they have been from the very beginning of the rumors of war.''

In recent weeks and months, opposition to war, at least in the form of a unilateral, preemptive strike against Iraq, has been voiced by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches, and a variety of leaders of non-Christian faiths. Only a handful of religious leaders, including some evangelical Protestants, have expressed support for a campaign against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Bush, who once as candidate for president named Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher (''because he changed my heart''), and who has met several times with religious leaders, believes in the need to disarm Iraq, with force if it comes to that. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius didn't address the moral questions raised by the clergy, but said Bush, too, wants peace.

''The president seeks a peaceful resolution to the disarmament of Saddam Hussein and his regime,'' Lisaius said. ''The use of force would be a last resort option, but ultimately the choice is Saddam Hussein's to make. As long as he possesses weapons of mass destruction, his regime will continue to be a real threat to the Iraqi people, his neighboring nations, and the entire world.''

Public support for military action against Iraq has been falling. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, released yesterday found that 52 percent of Americans favor an invasion, the lowest level since public discussion of an invasion began last summer. But pollsters and scholars say it's hard to find a direct impact from the statements of religious leaders on the trend, if it is one, or on official policy.

''Generally I would say that it doesn't have much impact,'' said Anna Greenberg, vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Washington, D.C.-based polling firm and a former professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

''I would bet there is relatively low awareness that religious leaders are saying anything about the war, for or against, because this story isn't getting a lot of ink,'' she said. ''And then you've got different voices in the religious community - on the left you have the Catholic Church and the liberal Protestant community, but when you look at white evangelical Protestants, these are groups that tend to be hyper-patriotic and extremely supportive of the president, not because they're religious, but because they're very conservative.''

Some religious leaders say they seem to have trouble transmitting their views, even to adherents.

''I do think the National Council of Churches and the Catholic bishops and some Jewish and Muslim and Buddhist groups have said things, but I don't know if a lot of ordinary people have heard those things, and I'm not sure why,'' said Sister Clare R. Carter, a Buddhist nun with the Nipponzan Myohoji Peace Pagoda in Leverett. ''For a lot of religious organizations, the administrative center functions on one level, but then there's the grass-roots churchgoing or synagogue-going community, and somehow the two don't always connect that successfully.''

And in some cases, the views of religious leaders have been difficult to figure out. The statement of the US Catholic bishops was not an all-out opposition to war, but a declaration that ''(b)ased on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq.'' Other denominations have also offered carefully couched views.

Although several rabbis are participating in tonight's event, the leadership of the Jewish community, concerned about a possible threat to Israel posed by Iraq, has generally been more sympathetic to possible military action than has the Christian community in the United States. None of the major Jewish movements has opposed or expressly endorsed unilateral action by the United States.

The Reform movement has been most wary. In September, the executive committee of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations' board of trustees sent an advisory to all Reform congregations, declaring that it would support unilateral military action by the United States only if Washington first pursued international cooperation and a nonmilitary solution.

The Conservative Jewish movement, through the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, declared in November that it ''supports the shared objective of the President and Congress to insure that appropriate action is taken to eliminate the danger posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.'' And the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America in October said, ''The current Iraqi regime represents the very sort of threat to world peace that the United Nations was created to deal with. While it is preferable for this threat to be neutralized through diplomacy, should these efforts fail, the United States has every right and obligation under the United Nations Charter and International Law to take firm and appropriate action.''

''There is a real diversity of feelings in the Jewish community,'' said Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, which, like numerous other Jewish organizations, has not taken a position on military action against Iraq. ''People don't like war, but a lot of people are feeling very worried about Saddam Hussein. As a last resort, many people would support an effort to disarm him, but no one wants to see Americans die.''

Earlier this month, members of the American Muslim Political Coordination Council, a coalition of the major American Muslim groups, called on Bush ''to dismiss initiating military action as a means to resolving the current crisis,'' saying that military action would destabilize the region, fuel anti-American sentiment, and ''burden the conscience of Americans with the loss of many innocent Iraqi lives.'' But the Muslim council also called on Saddam Hussein to step down as Iraqi president, ''to save the Iraqi people from further suffering and despair and to clear the image of Islam, a religion incompatible with dictatorships.''

The Trinity event is another example of increasing political activism for Shaw, who is bishop of the largest Episcopal diocese in the United States. A monk who lives in a monastery along Memorial Drive, Shaw has spent the last few years cultivating a more prominent role for his church and his office in public affairs, starting with his attention-getting stint as a congressional intern in 2000.

The event, which will begin at 7:30 p.m., will feature prayers in Arabic, English, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Hindi, and Japanese. Buddhists will chant with an otaiko prayer drum; Sikhs, seated on a prayer rug, will sing a shabd, a peace hymn, accompanied by a harmonium and an Indian drum called a tabla. A Muslim muezzin will call the assembly to prayer, while a Jewish cantor will sing a song of peace, and a United Methodist jazz musician will perform throughout the evening.

''I'm not sure that, at this stage of preparations for war, there have ever been so many voices so united and so concerned,'' said the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, the president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. ''We're giving our representatives the courage to speak out; we're letting our national leaders know we are not in agreement with a preemptive rush to war, and we are standing in solidarity with each other and with our neighbors in a faraway country called Iraq.''

Many representatives of faith traditions planning to attend tonight are not themselves pacifists, but say they don't believe war is justified under the current circumstances. Many Christian denominations hold to a theory of just war, which sanctions war under certain circumstances; Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh traditions also permit war in many cases.

''We are aware that sometimes, in defense of the truth or of the innocent, there is no alternative, but we also know that everything depends on peace,'' said Ekongkar Singh Khalsa, president of the Sikh Dharma of Massachusetts. ''Clearly, as a nation we are at a critical moment, and it is our hope that by reminding ourselves and our leaders that every heart of humanity longs for peace, we can find an alternative solution to this great crisis.''

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company

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