So the verdict is out. George W Bush is going to be around for another four years. That endorsement makes it the first time since the late US president Ronald Reagan where a president has ruled for the right, by the right and of the right.

If something else needs to be inferred from this election, it is perhaps the power of prayer. Or how some may prefer to call it, faith. Appropriately, it is nothing more than the belief that comes from practising a religion, where God is the chief denominator.

Well, what else is new? It is religion and how it matters now. Apart from the numerous sermons on the dangers of mixing it with politics, it can have a bearing on polity after all. That much became clearly evident on the historic day of Nov 2, 2004; a day that George Bush rightfully can thank heavens for making it all possible.

Local impact

In Malaysia, India and Indonesia, where religious groups masquerade as political activists; the US experience is clearly a lesson in objectivity. Religion is not to be trifled with, and underestimating it is something one does at their own peril.

Like a messenger from God, who comes around periodically to teach humankind the ways of the world; religion likewise tends to remind a polity that a nation is adrift.

From being deceptively complex to widespread ridicule for his poor English, Bush's opposition to gay marriages, stem-cell research, abortion and other church-centric issues has made him destiny's choice for America. Amazingly, this is happening despite his perceived 'handicaps'.

His mandate seen across a global plane now turns into a mandate for religious groups to resurface and gain electoral muscle.

If that happens, the secular brand of politics the world has known will acquire a new complexion, which for better or worse, will now mean reordering priorities and to incorporate religious values.

Moral Compass

While not wholly homogeneous, religious groups in Malaysia and Singapore can become a voice for the moral and compassionate conservatism advocated by US Republicans. Though not a bad thing altogether, the danger is apparent when one group imposes its version of what is right or wrong on the other, inadvertently causing battle lines to appear.

Whether it is opposition to homosexuality in Malaysia or the slaughter of cows in India, politicians will have to learn the hard way that these issues of heart do matter and not accommodating them is to go the way of John Kerry.

Closer to home, the implications of the Republican victory will be met with religious groups viewing the outcome with delight. It now presents them with an opportunity to crusade and lobby for their own interests.

Happening as the outcome did; those very concerns that featured in the US elections such as abortion, homosexuality and stem-cell research may resonate with vigour, now that the land that supposedly allows freedom in various forms, has 'banished' them.

Religious divide

In Malaysia, religious movements may view it as a signal to rehash old issues and thrust them once again onto a political platform.

But taken together these issues form the sum total of a people's universal wish to live a life without imposition or castigation. These issues, as it appears from the US election results, are nothing more than the values molded by spirituality, holding a political ideology together.

With the message is getting louder by the day, what needs repeating is how the ruled and ruling can ill-afford to be on opposite sides of the religious divide. For each time such an odd situation arises, a ballot box comes around to cleanse society of sin.

If history is to be remembered and recorded faithfully, the values that govern society, are reflected by what one says in a church, mosque or temple. More than whether one lives his life by these values; it is about the identity that a nation finds, which gives it a soul.

On Nov 2, 2004, America found that its identity was in crisis because the iron-clad conservative values that it wants the world to know about, were nowhere in John Kerry's ideological armour.

If Nov 2 is any indication, the secularism that we have all been told to practise now finds a new meaning. Politics does have a religious soul and as we have discovered over the week, a voice as well.

Jaya Prakash lectures in journalism at FIS Education Centre in Singapore.