An on-air message to Tiger Woods:

"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

The pure sectarianism of this comment - its adoption of the once-secular stage of political journalism to insert a call for apostasy - is striking. It even seemed to catch Bill Kristol off-guard a little. But it has long been established that non-evangelical Christians have at best an auxiliary role in today's religiously defined GOP, and the slow morphing of Fox News into the 700 Club is not exactly new. What earthly reason do these pundits now have to prevent or stop it? Once you have abolished the distinction between secular and religious discourse, as they routinely insist on doing, their politics is their religion and their religion is their politics. And both are corrupted.

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