[I]n recent years Sekulow has achieved a significant measure of political influence; he is consulted by the Bush administration on the choice of judges.

"He is, I think, more responsible than any other person for John Roberts being chief justice," said Peter Irons, a constitutional scholar, civil liberties lawyer and author of the recently published "God On Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields."

Sekulow said he was invited soon after President Bush took office to join what came to be called "the four horsemen." The group, which also included former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese, was formed "to be a kind of outside counsel on the judicial nomination issues, particularly the Supreme Court," Sekulow said.

It's easy for some to assume that Bush's nods to the religious right are a matter of lip service over substance. But on matters of Supreme Court nominees, for one, it is clear that the President did more than that.

From evangelism at the Pentagon to the selection of judicial appointments, it is increasingly obvious that the conservative Christian, Establishment-Clause-hating influence on our nation's executive branch is in fact very real.