FACTBOX: Republican candidates and religion

(Reuters) - The leading Republican candidates in the White House race will try to woo religious social conservatives on Friday and Saturday at a "Values Voter Summit" organized by the Family Research Council, a right-wing lobby group with strong evangelical ties.

Religion will play a major role in the 2008 presidential election in the United States, where church attendance rates and other indicators of faith are much higher than elsewhere in the developed world.

Here are some brief facts about the religious faith of some of the leading Republican contenders and their views on so-called hot-button social issues such as abortion. Conservative evangelicals are an important Republican base.

REPUBLICANS:

Rudy Giuliani - The former New York mayor was raised a Roman Catholic but is guarded about his church attendance.

His personal life -- married three times -- and his socially liberal views have put him at odds with the Republican Party's conservative evangelical base. He has expressed distaste for abortion but supports a woman's right to choose. He opposes gay marriage but in other respects supports gay rights.

James Dobson, founder of the influential conservative advocacy group Focus on the Family, told Reuters in an interview in April his base likely would stay home on Election Day if Giuliani was the Republican candidate.

There also has been conservative talk about a third-party candidate if he wins the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney - The former Massachusetts governor is the first serious Mormon contender for the presidency. But as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the church is officially known, Romney also may be a tough sell to the Republican's evangelical base.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found 52 percent of white evangelicals who attend church on a weekly basis did not view the Mormon faith as a Christian one.

There also are suspicions about his recent conversion to the anti-abortion cause, although he says it is heartfelt.

He told a National Right to Life Convention Forum in June that "I proudly follow a long line of converts (to the anti-abortion cause) -- George Herbert Walker Bush ... and Ronald Reagan to name a few."

Romney strongly opposes same-sex marriage.

Fred Thompson - The former Tennessee senator says on his campaign Web site: "Strong families are the bedrock of our nation and our culture. They are built around the sanctity of life and the institution of marriage, which is the union of a man and a woman."

That may place him in the social conservative camp but he has failed to excite Republican evangelicals. Thompson was baptized as a young boy into the conservative Church of Christ. But he was divorced in 1985 and he remarried in 2002 in a church affiliated with a more liberal denomination.

He reportedly attends Church of Christ services with his mother when he visits her in Franklin, Tennessee.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, only one previous president, James Garfield, belonged to the Church of Christ.

John McCain - The Arizona senator was raised in the mainstream Episcopal Church but is now a member of North Phoenix Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the conservative Southern Baptist Convention.

McCain also has failed to convincingly woo religious conservatives in his party, although he has certainly tried.

In 2000, he called religious right stalwart Jerry Falwell "an agent of intolerance." But in May 2006, he gave the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University.

McCain is staunchly anti-abortion and favors keeping the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. He is against gay marriage but did not support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex unions.

Mike Huckabee - Raised a Southern Baptist, the former pastor and Arkansas governor is a darling of the religious right. He has almost all the credentials they admire: Southern, male, devout evangelical and conservative.

Still, even he is not as hard-core on some issues as the Republican far right would like to see.

He would like to see the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave women a basic constitutional right to an abortion. But he has said that would leave abortion policy up to individual states.

He is strongly opposed to gay marriage but takes a less strident view than some conservatives on the issue of same-sex relations in general, saying in April: "That's their business. I may not agree with it and, in fact, don't agree with it. But I respect that they have the right to do it."

Sources: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, candidates' Web sites, Reuters, National Review Online, Time, The New Yorker