DEAR VOTER: GOD LOVES ME -- And so should you.

I don't know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by the way religion has been all over the news lately. Those of us who are involved in some way with religion (in my case, writing about it and engaging in what its enemies call "priestcraft") might be expected to be encouraged, and if the talk shifts to a more serious level that would be reasonable enough. But I am not particularly taken by what's out there so far. Al Gore's choice of Joe Lieberman was politically intelligent, though I am not as happy as some other people are at his public recommendations of religion.

At the same time, the objections expressed by the Anti-Defamation League and others who think that all discussion of religion must be kept out of the marketplace strike me as completely wrongheaded, as bad as the religious pandering of Gore and Lieberman and Bush, the last of whom seems to think that Jesus was a political philosopher. (Atheists could argue for the truth of their position on the ground that none of those who invoke the name of God for political reasons have been struck dead...though if they were it would mean that the God of the fundamentalists is in charge of the universe, in which case I would be in danger, and so, probably, would you.)

In the middle of all the American God-talk, we have had a Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. It was paid for by large corporations and convened at the United Nations. Ted Turner, who has called Christianity a religion for losers (he is right in ways he can't fathom), addressed them, but since he helped pay for the event, he gets to. Ted Turner's was not the only power felt there. The Dalai Lama was gracious enough to send a message, but his presence was blocked by China, and no one wants to offend the Chinese government. The pincers of Turner and China pretty much indicate the limits, and the worth, of this sort of thing.

The point of the Millennium Summit was to come as close as possible to a common mind about world peace and the power of religion to bring it about, or at least the help religion might offer in that direction. The idea that religious leaders might be vital to the process of peacemaking is important, as is the idea that religion matters much more than politics to the lives of a great many people.

There is something worthy in this. And although Lieberman's expressed piety makes me as uncomfortable as anything else that comes out of a politician's mouth, I have no doubt that his commitment is sincere, and that he has a right to say everything he has said. Why, then, do I find both the Millennium Summit and much of the celebration of Lieberman pathetic?

It is not because I agree with the secular assumption that religion is a private affair, a matter only of personal taste, like interior decoration. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. have shown the power of religion to bring about social change--and I suppose that is where my problem starts, because the use of God's name in a presidential campaign, or the effort to make religion look more important to the leaders of corporations and heads of state, puts religion firmly on the wrong side of the fence. It is as if it becomes important because the powerful have noticed and endorsed it, the way some people found Buddhism interesting for the first time when the movie star Richard Gere became a Buddhist.

Not that I am against making friends with the Mammon of Iniquity when it might do some real good. The problem with the use of God's name in a presidential campaign is that this really is taking the name of the Lord in vain. God is being put to use, as idols are, to the more important end of getting someone elected. Important as the UN may be, to seek the attention and approval of the world's leaders is not what religion should be about. Religion should, rather, challenge them.

But religion itself has much to answer for: the apparent complicity of some priests in the Rwandan genocide, Orthodox nationalism of the sort that excuses the burning of mosques and the murder of enemies, the variety of Islam that can co-exist easily with slavery. All of these atrocities are answered by believers with an appeal to a higher standard: Those people aren't really Christians (or Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.). Is this the best we can do? Maybe we shouldn't be surprised when religious people want more respect from the established political and economic powers. Maybe all they want is for those powers to recognize how cozy the religious already are, how much a part of the established order they have grown accustomed to being.