Who would have guessed that one of the biggest issues in this year's Presidential campaign would be God? Or that Republicans and Democrats would compete to be holier than thou? In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, what's God got to do with the Oval Office? Also, a sympathetic portrait of the "gang of five" – the leaders of the conservative crusade. And life at the corner of East and Now – an ex-hippie and former social radical finds her home in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Ron Rosenbaum is a journalist at the New York Observer and has written for magazines like Harper's, the New Yorker, and the New Republic. When he covered the Democratic convention in L.A., he sent home a piece called "The Hour of the Prig." He tells Jim Fleming that what he finds really objectionable is the piety and priggishness of all four candidates. Stephen Carter, one of America's premier scholars of religion and politics, is a law professor at Yale, and author of "God's Name in Vain – the Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics." He tells Jim Fleming that American presidential candidates have always talked about God.

Journalist Nina Easton has written a new book called "Gang of Five," which examines the methods and motivation of the five men at the heart of the Conservative Crusade. She tells Steve Paulson these conservative leaders come from the same background as their liberal brothers and sisters – the political breeding ground of the Nineteen Sixties.

In the 1960's Frederica Mathewes-Green was a hippie. She got married with Flowers in her hair, and gave religion hardly a passing thought. She tells Anne Strainchamps that one day in a Dublin church she had a mystical experience that changed her life, and today she is a devout member of an Eastern Orthodox Christian congregation. She writes about her faith in a memoir called "At the Corner of East and Now." Daniel Asa Rose also had a life changing experience with religion, which he found on a journey back to the Europe of World War II. He tells Steve Paulson that he had kept his faith hidden, but after his divorce he took his two sons on a journey to re-trace the steps of his relatives during the Holocaust.

• excerpts from the soundtrack to the movie Hoop Dreams
• selections from Les Mysteres des Voix Bulgares
• Live in the Fiddler's House with Itzhak Perlman

Distribution dates:

• week of 09/24/2000 - hour 2