In July, Connie Phillips and four friends donned "People of Faith for Kerry" T-shirts to volunteer at area food banks, joining a national effort by the Democratic campaign to show that President Bush did not have a corner on Christian voters.

By the time her group did flood relief in September, it numbered more than 100. They are now staffing phone banks to turn out the vote for Kerry.

There has been much publicity about the Republican attempts to work through churches -- asking for directories or implying that John Kerry would outlaw preaching on biblical passages that condemn gay sex. But recently in Western Pennsylvania, Democratic efforts to connect with faith groups have been more visible than those of Republicans -- including pulpit stints by John Edwards' wife and John Kerry's daughter.

The late surge in Democratic religious activism is drawing fire from liberal groups that normally attack the religious right. On Oct. 12, the Interfaith Alliance urged the Kerry campaign to "stop politicizing religion and misusing houses of worship for partisan political purposes." And Americans United For Separation of Church and State has filed as many complaints against churches for endorsing Kerry as for endorsing Bush.

Many local People of Faith for Kerry are first-time activists who rebelled after finding inflammatory pro-Bush voter guides at church. One included what Bush and Kerry said about the film "The Passion of the Christ."

"President Bush seemed to be saying that if you are a Christian and you are patriotic, that you had to be supporting him. That wasn't the way I was feeling and I wanted to let my friends know it was okay to support the other side," said Phillips, a piano teacher who attends Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church.

But when the national campaign asked her to recruit clergy to endorse Kerry, the clergy balked and so did she.

"We have not wanted to put our literature in churches. . . It's been strictly word of mouth," she said.

Nevertheless, the Kerry campaign has reached out, perhaps more actively than the Bush campaign.

It's no secret that the Rev. Thomas Smith, pastor of Monumental Baptist Church in the Hill District, will vote for Kerry. Which is why he turned down invitations to attend Kerry events for pastors.

"I don't have time to go to breakfasts to hear what I already know," he said.

Smith belongs to a statewide organization of black pastors that took some conservative heat in September for endorsing Kerry. The group can endorse because it represents the pastors, not their churches, he said. But he believes pastors sometimes endorse from the pulpit because they have little to lose.

"Most black churches don't have to worry about tax exemptions because they don't have any revenue of consequence to be concerned about," he said.

It's also no secret that the Rev. John Powell, pastor of Mt. Lebanon United Presbyterian Church, is voting for Bush. He's got Bush signs on his car and his front lawn. He tells church members, "I grieve the death of 1,000 Americans soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, but compared to 30 million abortions in the past 30 years, the most historically important issue is where the Supreme Court of America will go."

Yet Powell said he has never been contacted by the Bush campaign. The political turf war over congregations is due to data showing that most Americans want their president to be a person of faith, and that white people who attend church regularly are most likely to vote for Bush. Although black Christians are nearly identical in faith to white evangelicals, they vote Democratic based on issues of economic welfare. Liberal white Protestants are another key Kerry constituency.

Barry Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, believes Republicans have done more than Democrats to "lure churches into partisan politics."

"It's true that in the last few weekends there have been efforts by the Democratic National Committee to coordinate with what I would call pep rallies for Kerry in predominantly black churches," he said.

"But the simple presence of a candidate or a surrogate for the candidate in a church doesn't necessarily violate the IRS rules. ... It depends on what goes on and whether they are trying to get the pastor to use the resources of the church to support the candidate."

With polls deadlocked, there is intense competition for an estimated 10 percent of religious voters who remain undecided, said Shaun Casey, an ethicist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. He has worked closely with Mike McCurry, a devout Methodist and former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, who recently joined the Kerry campaign and is attempting to improve its outreach to people of faith.

"I think he's learned a bit and adapted in the last few months," Casey said of Kerry, a Catholic who has faced strong opposition from some Catholics over his support for abortion rights.

Religious people who are still undecided are so tortured that they may not vote at all, said John Green, a University of Akron pollster who is an authority on how faith affects voting. The recent ad war in The Pittsburgh Catholic between liberal Catholics advocating multi-issue voting and conservative Catholics who give abortion top priority could have a real impact, he said.

"Serious Catholics with a more liberal agenda are pretty conflicted and probably divided fairly evenly. I have a feeling that, in the end, these people may go to Kerry more than Bush, but the end hasn't arrived yet," he said.

"The backlash against some religious right literature that drove Phillips and others to become Kerry activists could also be a factor, Green said.

"Many of the people who produce this literature for the religious right are savvy, and they understand that there is a cost to their rhetoric. But they calculate that the people they mobilize are larger in number than the people they drive away. They may not always be right about that," Green said.

Backlash cuts both ways, said Bruce Barron, a Bethel Park math teacher who did his doctorate on evangelical political behavior and who once worked for Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. When evangelicals read articles that mock Bush because he shares their faith, they feel that they, too, are under attack.

"That kind of talk only cements evangelical support for Bush," Barron said.