The efforts of the Democrats to court religious people have failed so far. The Pew Research Center released a poll yesterday that shows fewer people see Democrats as friendly to religion than did one year ago.

One year ago, 40 percent of Americans felt Democrats were friendly to religion. Now, only 29 percent feel that way. This is despite meetings with clergy and hiring a coordinator for religious outreach. Maybe the problem is this: Democrats are not friendly to religion.

Democrats routinely confuse religion with values. They say they need to do a better job of talking about their values and showing that people share their values. Values may be a religion to Democrats, but not to religious people. For religious people, values flow from religion, but religion means worship of God and obedience to his commands.

So, the Democratic leader says, look, we support a higher minimum wage and that is a value, a good value. Therefore, we are just like religious people. At the same time, the same leader supports groups that seek to remove religion, especially Christianity, from public life. They support abortion and want to force people who find it abhorrand to pay for it with their tax dollars. The want to force homosexuality on religious people and give it the same place in society as traditional marriage.

Those are not the values that will sell with religious people.

But, those are Democrat values.