The massive poll win for Poland's liberal-right Civic Platform party, which has ousted Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's hardline conservatives in the general election, is a defeat for extreme Catholic nationalism, analysts say.

Hard-line Christian groups who say mild-mannered Harry Potter is an occult conspiracy are unlikely to be reassured by news that one of its key characters is gay - even though JK Rowling has confirmed the series is based on Christian themes.

The End is Night - or then again, perhaps it isn't. That is the message of "Apocalypse: the Final Revelation", an art exhibition inaugurated this week in the Sistine Hall of the Vatican Museums which aims to cast new light on a controversial biblical book.

Those hoping that when George W. Bush departs the Oval Office, religion will accompany him are likely to be disappointed, says Jonathan Bartley, if a book by the former Guardian religious affairs correspondent is right.

If the Roman Catholic Rudy Giuliani is the next Republican candidate for US president, as seems likely, says Giles Fraser, it could well mark the beginnings of a historic GOP divorce from the religious right.

Simon Barrow says that the idea of 'religious liberals' being foils for bombers and bigots is a distorted and distorting notion produced by too much heat and not enough light.

A speaker at a Washington DC rally to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war has apologised for Baptists and other evangelicals who used theological arguments to justify military action.