Now that Mike Huckabee has climbed into the first tier of presidential contenders, he is attracting attacks from all sides, not just from the left but from the right. Robert Novak has written a column branding him a “false conservative.”

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own? That has happened with Huckabee, a former Baptist minister educated at Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The danger is a serious contender for the nomination who passes the litmus test of social conservatives on abortion, gay marriage and gun control but is far removed from the conservative-libertarian model of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Note the condescension oozing from that paragraph. But it marks a true division between the “country club Republicans” and the more populist Christian activists. The former have been quite eager to use Christians and other social conservatives to “blast” Republicans “out of their minority status.” But to actually elect someone like that should not be allowed.

Huckabee’s alleged heresies from conservatism include his calling the elite “Club for Growth” the “Club for Greed,” for having raised taxes as governor of Arkansas, and for being concerned with the environment.

But might a Christianity-informed conservatism be different from the usual kind? Or should two-kingdom Christians focus on these economic issues at the expense of issues such as abortion?

Now that the Pope has legalized the Latin Tridentine mass as an alternative to contemporary Catholic worship, guess who is flocking to those services?

“It’s the opposite of the cacophony that comes with the [modern] Mass,” said Ken Wolfe, 34, a federal government worker who goes to up to four Latin Masses a week in the Washington area. “There’s no guitars and handshaking and breaks in the Mass where people talk to each other. It’s a very serious liturgy.”

And it is a hit with younger priests and their parishioners.

Attendance at the Sunday noon Mass at St. John the Beloved in McLean has doubled to 400 people since it began celebrating in Latin. Most of the worshipers are under 40, said the Rev. Franklyn McAfee.

Younger parishioners “are more reflective,” McAfee said. “They want something uplifting when they go to church. They don’t want something they can get outside.”

For some, the popularity of the service represents the gap between older Catholics, who grew up in the more liberal, post-Vatican II era, and their younger counterparts, who say they feel like they missed out on the tradition that was jettisoned in the move to modernize.