The truth about George W. Bush and his campaign is that conservative religious people helped get him elected. These supporters of George W. are Christian religious people with a good deal of money.

Some of them are Roman Catholic bishops who can twist a vote simply by writing letters for their obedient priests to read in church on Sunday morning. And some are fundamentalist, right-wing Christians, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who claim to control the votes of millions of true believers.

When those two disparate groups of Christians mobilize their people, an election can be changed dramatically. Robertson’s chief tool in most campaigns is the voter guide published by the Christian Coalition. This year, about 14 issues were covered in the voter guide, and the answers were all simple and clearly conservative.

For instance, we should all be concerned about education, and Pat Robertson believes that parents should have control of the educational process. So the voter guide said that it asked the candidates if they supported educational choice for parents — and that Vice President Al Gore said he did not, while George W. said he did. The guide also asked the candidates if they wanted “powerful unions” to control schools. Of course, Gore said he did want union control while Bush said he did not.

I find it hard to believe that those questions were put that directly to candidates and that their answers were represented fairly. We know the numbers of conservative Christians who follow the guidance of Robertson, pegged at about 70 million now, is growing every year. Then we have to add other religious right stars — dozens of organizations that jump into the campaigns and offer conservative candidates a helping hand — often a financial helping hand.

For instance, Bush worked hard to get the endorsement of the aging evangelist Billy Graham. Bush credits Graham with his conversion to conservative religion and politics. The president-elect claims that Graham and Jesus changed his perspective in a midlife conversion at his parents’ vacation home in Maine.

Graham has never endorsed a presidential candidate, but he sure enough wanted to give George W. the nod.

During a Jacksonville, Fla., church rally, Graham said he liked Bush a lot. “I don’t endorse candidates,” Graham said, according to Christians United for the Separation of Church and State. “But I’ve come as close to it, I guess, now as any time in my life, because I think it’s extremely important. I believe in the integrity of this man.”

We’ve always known that Billy had a soft spot for presidents — he has courted every chief executive since Harry Truman. And this Jacksonville statement — if you squint just a bit — starts to look an awful lot like an endorsement.

So Bush, who is a late addition to conservative Christian troopers, got the endorsement of Robertson, Falwell, Graham, Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, the Rev. Donald Wildmon of American Family Association and the Rev. D. James Kennedy’s Center for Reclaiming America. Meanwhile, Al Gore, as the campaign dragged on, looked more and more like the devil incarnate. Some say that’s why he chose Joe Lieberman as his running mate, to give a little religious weight to his campaign.

Gore was also the sacrificial lamb for the Catholic bishops of America. Here are 350 powerful men who work quietly and often secretly to bring their influence to bear upon politicians on one particular issue: abortion.

At the annual bishops’ gathering in Washington, D.C., in 1998, the prelates voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution that would make banning abortion the bishops’ top political goal. But some of the bishops fear Internal Revenue Service rules that threaten sharp penalties for involvement in party politics.

So they enlist organizations such as Priests for Life to deliver the goods in these battles. Priests for Life spent $250,000 to promote the anti-abortion stance of George W. Bush. They send out faxes to Catholic parishes and purchased ads in Catholic newspapers across the United States.

Now political groups such as Christians United for the Separation of Church and State are lamenting the fact that Bush won with the help of conservative religious groups across the United States. I wonder what weakened the resolve of moderate and liberal religious groups. Where is their support as good candidates seek America’s votes?

Clark D. Morphew