By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Some of the punditry about embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's faithiness are taking me back to the days when those of us in the news business weren't expected to know too much about religion.

Take this description from the lead of Gene Lyons's column today about why Republican extramarital affairs deserve more scorn than Democratic ones:

... like most Southern Republicans, Sanford talked like a biblical fundamentalist: piously condemning others' sexual sins and boasting about his own righteousness.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

A groundbreaking survey about the faith lives of gay Americans that the Barna Group put out last week got surprisingly little attention. In my latest God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly, I tied the Barna survey's fascinating portrait of gay religious life to the gay rights movement's recent efforts to ratchet up outreach and messaging. Much of the work is aimed at reversing the gay-as-Godless stereotype.

Here's the top:

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Focus on the Family's vice president of communications E-mails to protest my post about the silence of family values groups on Mark Sanford's affair. Focus, he says, has hardly kept quiet, responding to interview requests from Politico, the Washington Times, and a small New England newspaper.

Given what Focus's powerful media ministry is capable of—through a press release, an E-mail to supporters, or its daily flagship radio show with James Dobson—I'd say these interviews move Focus's response from the silent to low-profile column. But Focus's reaction raises a larger question about what should be expected from family values groups in response to the affairs of elected officials.

It's important to note that the same conservative Christian groups that have laid low on the Sanford affair were also pretty quiet about recent revelations of Democratic affairs, from Eliot Spitzer to John Edwards. In those cases, it was the news media that played the role of moralizer, not family values groups. Fact is, those groups are focused on public policy, not on the private behavior of elected officials, regardless of their party ID.

So is it fair to expect family values organizations to pipe up when a Republican ally takes a serious moral fall? Or should such groups more loudly denounce Republican allies who claim to promote a family values agenda, while Democratic politicians like Spitzer and Edwards rarely made such claims?

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

The Family Research Council isn't usually in the business of praising Democrats. But it's giving props to 19 House Dems for writing to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say that healthcare reform must avoid ushering in government-funded abortion.

It will be fascinating to watch how the abortion-rights community responds as more and more abortion opponents raise the issue, now that President Obama's healthcare reform drive is running full-tilt.

Here's the letter:

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Not much news in Vanity Fair's epic-length Sarah Palin profile, but there are two tidbits I haven't seen before on the Alaska governor's faithy side. First, Christian publisher Zondervan is issuing a separate, special edition of Palin's forthcoming memoir: 

Soon Palin will take a crack at her own story: she has signed a book contract for an undisclosed but presumably substantial sum, and has chosen Lynn Vincent, a senior writer at the Christian-conservative World magazine, as co-author of the memoir, which is to be published next year not only by HarperCollins but also in a special edition by Zondervan, the Bible-publishing house, that may include supplemental material on faith.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

One week after Mark Sanford admitted to his affair with an Argentine woman—and a day after he called his mistress his "soul mate" and acknowledged further indiscretions—I'm struck by the total silence of pro-family groups.

The Family Research Council has been completely quiet on the South Carolina governor's affair. So has Concerned Women for America. Ditto for Focus on the Family.

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

I attended my first Christians United for Israel event last night.

For those of you who don't know, Christians United for Israel was launched by well-known evangelist John Hagee in 2006 and has quickly become the face of Christian Zionism in the United States.

The organization recently sponsored its 100th Night to Honor Israel event. These affairs are high-spirited, pro-Israel rallies that draw mostly evangelical Christians. I attended a more sober happening, a kind of informational session called a Stand for Israel Event at the historic First Baptist Church in Hightstown, N.J.

Andrew Summey, the organization's regional coordinator, addressed a crowd of about 30 for a little more than an hour. My back-of-envelope observations: