WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Evangelical struggles to settle on a Republican presidential

WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Evangelical struggles to settle on a Republican presidential candidate led the Religion Newswriters Association’s list of top religion stories of 2007.

The results were based on votes from 80 reporters who cover religion in the general-circulation press.

The top story was “Evangelical voters ponder whether they will be able to support the eventual Republican candidate, as they did in 2004, because of questions about the leaders’ faith and/or platform.”

Close behind at No. 2 was “Leading Democratic presidential candidates make conscious efforts to woo faith-based voters after admitting failure to do so in 2004.”

The rest of the top 10: ongoing divides over gays and lesbians in clergy; global warming’s emergence as a religious issue; illegal immigration and faith; pro-democracy protests by Buddhist monks in Myanmar; conservative Episcopalians aligning with bishops in the global South; Supreme Court rulings involving religion, including the upholding of a ban on certain late-term abortions; deaths of evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell, Rex Humbard, D. James Kennedy and others; and the cost of Roman Catholic Church U.S. sex abuse crisis surpassing $2.1 billion.