While TV pundits are still tripping over their tongues to make sense of Tuesday's vote, the La Cañada Presbyterian Church is taking a longer look at the influence of religion on American political life from Revolutionary times to the present.
Lincoln biographer and Huntington Library Fellow Ronald C. White will on Friday lead a forum at the church titled "God in America: How Religion Unites and Divides Us," a discussion White describes as part history lesson and part call for a calmer approach to a stormy subject.
"Religion in politics is contested territory in our society," said White, a La Cañada Flintridge resident. "On the one hand I think it's often been sadly neglected within universities, but on the other hand it has often been misused by people to the right who persist in trying to suggest that this is and has always been a Christian nation. So I'll ask, 'Where does the truth lie?'"