Newsweek's September 15th cover read "Palin-tol-ogy," the "advanced study of Sarah Palin and how she sees the world." Since her surprise find as the GOP vice-presidential nominee, the media has been in a tizzy trying to get the definitive story about just who Sarah Palin is. Perhaps the primary reason this newly unearthed conservative evangelical has received so much attention is that she has enlivened what was assumed to be an ossifying Christian Right. For some political progressives--who legitimately note the divisive and uncivil turn that religion has taken over the last few decades--Palin has confirmed an old suspicion: that religion is primarily "a problem" for American democracy.

These "religion as problem" progressives tend to have three prominent worries:

• that religious people ultimately prefer a theocracy of their own religion to democratic pluralism;
  
• that religion breeds incivility and intolerance; and
  
• that religious passion is dangerously irrational and makes people of faith unreliable partners.
  

But if progressives allow these familiar worries to cloud their vision this election season, they will be misreading the changing religious landscape, where there is an emerging progressive religious movement that encompasses numerous faithful allies on progressive issues.