Whenever someone asks me about religion, my usual response is that I am a fallen Unitarian, which is about as low as you can go.

But anyone who has any familiarity with progressive politics is surrounded by Christians and deeply religious people all the time.

Whenever I go on a peace march, I am surrounded by Christians.

Once a month, I attend community brainstorming in Milwaukee where African-American leaders and ordinary folk get together to talk about serious social issues. It's in a church basement, and a whole lot of the people there are really devout Christians.

My wife and I went on a journey earlier this year to some of the most notorious civil rights crime scenes in this country - places like Selma, Ala., Birmingham, Philadelphia, Miss., Meridian, Miss. People we met who risked their lives fighting for American values during dangerous times were Christians in the very best sense in the word.

But there's one thing about all those Christians I just mentioned. They bear absolutely no resemblance to the Christians I read about in the media who are the apparent interest group behind narrow-minded, mean-spirited legislation introduced by Republican legislators.

The Christians I know do not promote hatred against other people. They don't oppose medical research that could save millions of lives. They don't want ignorance taught in our schools.

They still believe Christianity has something to do with loving your neighbor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the least among us.

So I think the media and politicians should stop giving Christianity a bad name.

Jim Wallis, the evangelical Christian who wrote "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the LeftDoesn't Get It," likes to point out that one out of every 10 verses in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke refer to economic injustice.

Yet politicians ignore the huge forest of biblical teachings to concentrate on a few tortured twigs they somehow twist into justification for virulent opposition to abortion or gay marriage. (The conservative religious position on gay marriage should be to insist upon it.)

Kurt Vonnegut, in his new book of essays "A Man Without a Country,"wonders why the publicly pious are so enamored of the Ten Commandments instead of Jesus' beautiful Sermon on the Mount in which he blessed the merciful and the peacemakers.

"Often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings," Vonnegut wrote. "I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

It's been said that those who use the Bible as an excuse to pass laws against private sexual conduct that's none of their business should read the entire book instead of just the dirty parts.

Of course, reading the Bible doesn't do any good if people can misinterpret poetic language that encourages love and compassion for one another as somehow advocating the exact opposite - hatred and intolerance.

It is an injustice to good-hearted Christians everywhere that politicians today define moral issues in the most small-minded, divisive ways imaginable.

Instead of focusing on the major moral issues of the day - oh, little things like reducing the growing chasm between bloated have-it-alls and desperate have-nots - politicians play Sneetch politics.

"The Sneetches" was the Dr. Seuss book in which Star-Belly Sneetches whose bellies had stars considered themselves morally superior to Plain-Belly Sneetches who had none upon thars.

In bill after bill, Republican legislators attempt to chip away at a woman's right to decide whether to have a child if she becomes pregnant or to torpedo the pioneering stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin that could revolutionize medical treatment forever.

Instead of looking out for the long-term health and welfare of Sneetches everywhere, politicians seek short-term advantage from intentionally inflaming petty differences between Star-Belly Sneetches and Plain-Belly Sneetches.

Wisconsin has just become the national repository for all approved stem cell research lines. All the other states spending millions to attract such research would kill for the distinction. Legislators here are still trying to sabotage stem cell research.

State Senate Republicans just passed a ban on human cloning, something that isn't going on in Wisconsin anyway. But hidden in the bill was a ban on therapeutic cloning, which could be used to extend stem cell lines for medical research.

Stem cell lines in a Petri dish are not human life. They will never become human life. On behalf of the most virulent religious extremists, politicians are still trying to shut down this life-saving research.

The majority of Christians who really care about human life should demand politicians stop taking their name in vain.

Copyright ©2005, Capital Newspapers.