In Tennessee, just down the road from Dayton, the town where John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in the case made famous by Clarence Darrow’s verbal duel with William Jennings Bryan and by the news coverage of H. L. Mencken, is the town of Whitwell. A white Protestant hamlet, it approved a middle school course on the Holocaust. The memorial consisted of seeking to collect a paper clip for each of the 6 million Jews who perished in the war. In short order, 22 million paper clips were gathered, along with a Polish railroad car as a small Holocaust museum. I was privileged to visit Whitwell twice, and it was as moving as you might imagine.

I was thinking of it as I sought to sort through the fact that one of the reasons some Jewish voters feel distant from the Bush-Cheney ticket is a fear of extending the influence of the Christian Right.

Jewish groups ally with the Catholic Church on issues of mutual concern despite differences over abortion rights. Catholics are historically seen by Jews as fellow immigrants. The Christian Right, in its various permutations, does not benefit from this, and thus has failed to cement stronger ties despite its strong support for Israel. According to a new poll for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, likely evangelical voters resemble Jewish voters in that they see support for Israel as the key, or a key, issue in deciding whether to back Mr. Bush or Mr. Kerry.

But this similarity is not perceived because of the deep-seated allergy (judging by the polls) most American Jews have to President Bush’s religiosity, his evangelical Christianity. For example, an Internet pop-up ad by the National Jewish Democratic Council invites readers to join if they are “Frustrated by George Bush’s conservative Christian agenda.”

On the face of it, these apprehensions are not misperceived. I myself am, if not “scared,” then at least anxious about the Christian Right’s power in the current Bush administration and its likely role in the next, should the president be reelected. I disagree with the erosion of barriers separating church and state and with limits they have already placed on funding of embryonic stem cell research and on abortion rights.

Elements of the Christian Right are not only opposed to gay marriage – an arguable proposition – but are homophobic. Witness the recent brouhaha over the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart’s threat to kill any gay man making a pass at him: “If any man came onto me, I’d kill him and tell God he died,” is how it was put by Rev. Swaggart, a cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis.

There is also a strong bias against science. A few years ago, a Jew from the state of Georgia, Jeffrey Selman, had to get help from the Anti-Defamation League to sue the Atlanta suburban Cobb County School District over its decision to place stickers in science textbooks calling evolution a scientific theory, not a fact.

Because Mr. Bush genuinely agrees with them and because of their considerable weight within the Republican Party, these factions are likely to wax in a second Bush term.

But what about what happened in Whitwell? The lessons drawn by the Tennesseans did not end with 1945. The prayer at the opening ceremony asked God to watch over the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Though it surprised me at the time, I have discovered that this is hardly unique. On October 4, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” focused on the Cornerstone Family Church’s prayer group in Des Moines, Iowa. In the midst of this report came a voice-over from a Susan Fox, who was praying: “I ask for your special protection over the Jewish people in every country, Lord, that you would shield them and protect them, Lord God, and that you would bring them back, Lord God, to Israel.”

Perhaps this wouldn’t make as much of an impression as it does if the Israeli cause were still embraced as warmly as it once was in the liberal community. But as evangelical Christians marched in Jerusalem earlier this month in support of Israel, Presbyterians and Anglicans were signing on to the Blame Israel campaign, moving toward divesting any investments in companies doing business in the disputed territories.

My old friend Dennis Prager, now a radio show host, argues that Christian conservatives are the Jewish people’s newest best friends. Maybe, but it does not follow that there are no obstacles to a good relationship. Unrequited love can turn sour. Evangelicals may not be patient enough to wait out Mr. Prager’s wry prediction – that Evangelicals will support Israel until Jesus returns. It strikes me as a formula bound to cause frustration when messianic expectations recede.

George Orwell once said that when one becomes an anticommunist, one is embarrassed by one’s allies. As the great political journalist might have noted were he with us today, when you become pro-Israel, you’re embarrassed less by your allies than by your enemies. Who would have thought that in the year 2004, American Jews and liberal supporters of the Jewish state would be arguing with the “enlightened” world on Israel’s behalf, rebuffed by Clarence Darrow’s heirs and wooed by William Jennings Bryan’s?

Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.