While a large majority of leaders of mainline U.S. Christian denominations are strongly opposed to war with Iraq, their congregations don't necessarily agree.

According to the Associated Press, a Gallup Poll released in early March found that 63 percent of those who said they attend church almost weekly favored a U.S. military invasion to end Saddam Hussein's rule. Fifty-nine percent of the general public believes war is necessary. A Pew Research Center poll question asked in February produced similar results.

"Religious leaders are called to be leaders," said the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, the anti-war chief executive of the Reformed Church in America. "If they know how to lead well, people will be influenced -- not all, but certainly some."

The Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a peace activist, said religious leaders must say what they believe is right -- even if some church members disagree.

"It's interesting to see how far apart we are from some of the laity," said Edgar, a clergyman in President Bush's United Methodist Church. "But that's not unlike the prophets and apostles of the Old and New Testaments" who were rejected by their own people.

In mainline Protestant denominations, the clergy-laity political divide first won wide notice in the late 1960s, during the Vietnam War.

By 1972, Dean Kelley's book "Why Conservative Churches Are Growing" warned that churches decline when they overemphasize politics and neglect spiritual substance.