Derrick Z. Jackson of The Boston Globe praises John Kerry for the much-repeated sound bite from his acceptance speech last night: “‘I don’t wear my own faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don’t want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.'” “It was about time the Democrats started fighting faith with faith,” Jackson writes, reinforcing both the legitimacy of the so-called “God gap,” and the likelihood that we’re in for another three months of discussing whether Kerry’s made it across.

And if Kerry does make it across “the gap”, what will his vision of the kingdom be? Something like the Rainbow Nation, according to one delegate, Julia Hicks, a retired college professor and Southern Baptist from Westminster, Colorado. “‘We believe in God, we believe in this country, but we do not believe in shoving God down peoples’ throats; everybody has different beliefs,'” Hicks told Amy Fagan of The Washington Times. “Democrats remain committed to talking about faith,” Fagan writes, despite the growth of the “‘secular warriors,’ or ‘no guns, no prayer’ voters, are becoming a bigger force in Democratic politics.”

Sacred Spaces: A group of 30 clerics, neuroscientists and architects met for two days in Columbus, Indiana to study how the mind reacts to the sensations of entering a house of worship, with the hope of creating designs that will enhance the meeting of the sacred and earthly. The meeting, reports the AP’s Ken Kusmer was the latest in a series of “exploratory workshops” into architecture and neuroscience organized by the American Institute of Architects. Read more.

A 37-page Vatican statement, expected to be released tomorrow, allegedly criticizes feminism for “trying to ignore the biological differences between the sexes.” An AP report based on the Italian daily Corriere della Sera said “the document attacks the ‘ideology of gender’ and stresses that a woman ‘is not a copy of a man.’ It repeats the prohibition on women becoming priests, but suggests that women should have an important role in the church.”