For instance, candidate John McCain took a couple of swipes at fundamentalist bad boys the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson.

Yet a few weeks later, he was saying goodbye to his presidential dream. So perhaps it's just the opposite, that a presidential candidate should only speak well of religious figures if he wants to occupy the Oval Office.

Take a look at the two candidates now competing for the White House. Both George W. Bush and Al Gore have been raised and trained to be president, and now they are being supported by the big money that few of us can even comprehend.

They are the royalty of politics - the sons of famous daddies - the princes who would be king.

And don't think for a minute that they would ever criticize a religious figure. To be sure, George W. Bush, an Episcopalian by birth, did some politicking at Bob Jones University, where some say anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiment has been mentioned. And Al Gore laid aside his Southern Baptist leanings and raised some funds at a Buddhist enclave a few years ago.

So we know that both presidential candidates will use religion to gain an advantage over their opponents. But we also know they will probably not voice any criticism of a religious figure.

Can you imagine Bush saying anything negative about Pope John Paul II or the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader? And do you think that Gore, with his environmental bandwagon, would ever shake an accusing finger at Billy Graham or even at Billy's son, Franklin, who has admitted he once chopped down a tree with a machine gun, wasting more than 700 bullets in the process.

No, from this moment on, all the way through to the inauguration of a new president, no religious figures will be mulched. No matter how much fun it might be, no holy figures are going to get a pie in the face.

John McCain got fed up with religious figures in Virginia because he sensed they were following the party line - that is, they were knuckling under to the Republican bosses and supporting Bush. And in his frustration McCain went after Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

"Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance," McCain said. "Whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right."

Boom! McCain was labeled a basher of evangelicals by the columnists who are controlled by the Republican Party and who know nothing about the current religious culture.

What those columnists don't realize is, Falwell and Robertson are not evangelicals - they are fundamentalists. Actually Robertson is a pentecostal who believes his prayers can redirect the paths of hurricanes and tornadoes, but he is also a fundamentalist. Falwell is nothing but a fundamentalist, pure and simple.

Both men cause divisions and for many years have made no attempt to unify Republican voters. But the fundamentalist Christians they influence are the most dependable voting group in the Republican Party. So most Republican candidates will tolerate Falwell and Robertson because some big shots believe they can deliver votes.

But they are not evangelicals. An evangelical is a person who believes the most important faith issue is how Christians can preach and teach the Gospel to the multitudes. But Robertson and Falwell believe the most important issue is how to push and shove their version of the truth into every head and heart in the country. And the way to do that is to control television, radio, political channels, church governance and every radical, true believing preacher in the country.

In order to be in Falwell's and Robertson's camp, a person has to throw out any possible theological ambiguity. Evangelicals could not dump all their ambiguity because you will often hear them say, "I'm not sure about this, but I think Jesus ... "

This is not because evangelicals are ignorant but because they understand the faith is so complicated that one human being could never master all the nuances of meaning. But guys like Falwell and Robertson are absolutely sure that they know everything about the truth and that one part of it is who ought to be president. That's why we should always be nervous around these fellows because nothing on the face of this Earth is that simple.

Clark D. Morphew