David Gibson, Religion News Service

It may not rank up there with Donald Trump’s “Two Corinthians” coinage or Hillary Clinton’s tortured email explanations, but a phrase that Tim Kaine used in an effort to yoke his Catholicism to the Methodist faith of his Democratic running mate deserves closer scrutiny.

“I’m a Catholic. Hillary is a Methodist,” Kaine said during a Florida rally on July 23 as Clinton introduced him as her vice presidential pick. “Her creed is the same as mine: Do all the good you can.”

Amid heightened tensions over ISIS-fueled terror attacks and anti-Muslim rhetoric, a prominent U.S. cardinal says Islam “wants to govern the world” and Americans must decide if they are going to reassert “the Christian origin of our own nation” in order to avoid that fate.

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a Rome-based prelate known as an outspoken conservative and critic of Pope Francis’ reformist approach, said in an interview on July 20 that Islam is “fundamentally a form of government.”

Donald Trump can’t let it go.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has faced days of pointed criticism for a Twitter attack on Hillary Clinton that used an image that looked like the Star of David and appeared to deploy anti-Semitic stereotypes.

Donald Trump’s flagging presidential bid is enjoying a boost of that old-time religion after conservative Christian leaders gave the candidate high praise and standing ovations at a critical closed-door meeting that one observer described as a “campaign rally.”

Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich has decried the apparent targeting of gays and lesbians in the Orlando nightclub massacre and called for greater efforts on gun control, the first senior U.S. Catholic churchman to identify a likely reason the victims were singled out and raise the controversial issue of access to weapons.

As Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination heated up in these past months, so too did comparisons between the fervor fueling Sanders’ political movement and the faith-based mobilization of an old-time religious revival.

“More than any other candidate Bernie draws on the language of right and wrong to make his pitch. Politics for Bernie isn’t a job, it’s a crusade,” Grant Diamond, pastor of Faith Baptist Mill Creek, west of Chicago, wrote on his blog last month.

Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore has not been shy about mixing it up with Donald Trump, and now Moore is at it again, telling an interviewer that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is a “lost person” who needs to find Jesus.

“My primary prayer for Donald Trump is that he would first of all repent of sin and come to faith in Jesus Christ,” Moore told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network in a video posted June 3.

If some political conservatives are appalled that Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, many social conservatives — especially evangelical Christians who are the soul of the movement — have been practically gnashing their teeth over the stunning success of the brash New York real estate magnate.

The nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization has been earnestly educating Americans for years about Islam while denouncing the growing tide of anti-Muslim bigotry.

But it’s always an uphill battle, so this week the Council on American-Islamic Relations decided to try a little humor instead. The result is the introduction of a spoof medication called “Islamophobin” that seems sure to get more notice than CAIR’s usual campaigns.