Robert Oldendick is a political science professor at the University of South Carolina and director of its Institute for Public Service and Policy Research. He has said that in the general election, the “faith factor” may grab some attention, but it won’t change how people vote.

Read a July 18, 2010, story in the Tulsa World about State Question 755 on Oklahoma’s November 2010 ballot.

Charles W. Dunn is Distinguished Professor of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. He edited The Future of Religion in American Politics (2009).

At the website of The New Republic, James Downie critiques that view in a Sept. 3, 2010, post.

This Sept. 2, 2010, essay at the website of the Heritage Foundation sounded the alarm about a New Jersey case that author Cully Stimson argued is evidence that “Sharia-loving extremists are determined to establish an Islamic Caliphate around the world, especially in America.”

In September 2010 the Center for Security Policy released this report that called Islamic law “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.”

Read an Oct. 12, 2010, column by Reza Aslan at The Daily Beast about the push to ban Shariah.

Read the Oct. 13, 2010, story by CBS News.

Susan B. Hansen is a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Religion and Reaction: The Secular Political Challenge to the Religious Right (2011).