It is time for an update on a warning by John Danforth, a conservative Republican three-term senator from Missouri and an ordained Episcopal minister, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the extreme religious right. As he put it in a New York Times article in March, “The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.”

He focused on the party’s advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to embryonic stem cell research and the congressional and presidential effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.

Now he has come out with a second column, a ringing defense of the separation of church and state and an appeal to moderate Christians to “add their clear voice of moderation to the debate on religion in politics.” He disputed the approach of many conservative Christians that they hold “the one authentic Christian perspective in politics” and their “certainty that they know God’s truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through government action.”

Speaking for moderate Christians, he wrote: “We think that efforts to haul references to God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.”

But are Mr. Danforth’s warnings enough to reverse a 30-year campaign by the religious right to take over the Republican Party? Its spokesmen boast that, through the Bush administration, it is reversing much of the Rooseveltian New Deal social legislation and that the current president, his secretary of state, the House speaker and the Senate majority leader are all evangelical Christians.

To find out where John Danforth now is heading, the Bangor Daily News asked him a series of questions. He replied in a telephone call from his law office in St. Louis.

What response has he had to his campaign? “Overwhelmingly positive” – including endorsements from former and current Republican office holders. “I think it touched a nerve.”

What other issues are involved, besides gay marriage, stem cell research and the Schiavo intervention? The central question of whether the Republican Party considers itself a Christian party. And federal funding of faith-based social services. “I don’t think the government should be in the business of subsidizing religion.”

What did he think of The Times’ headline on his latest column, “Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers,” suggesting an organized political movement to overturn the influence of conservative Christians? Sen. Danforth clearly liked it. He said many people have asked what they can do. For one thing, write letters to elected Republican officials. And moderate Christian leaders should speak out, specifically Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and United Church of Christ. “So far, there has been an eerie silence.”

He has more in mind. He would like to see some moderate Republican politician undertake a “suicide mission” and run for president on a platform of breaking the hold of the Christian right on the party. He said such a candidate would lose, but raising the issue in Iowa and New Hampshire and other primaries would stimulate a national debate.

Who, for example? He didn’t venture a name. How about himself? No, for two reasons: He wouldn’t want to lose. And, second, he so enjoys life with his wife in retirement from public life that he wouldn’t want to win. But he is far from through with his personal crusade.