. >> abernethy: with all the activity this week on the religious right and the religious left, kim lawton spoke to a leading religion and politics expert john green about how these movements have fared since the last election. >> reporter: john green is director of the ray c. bliss institute of applied politics at the university of akron. he says with the democratic congress and the new obama administration, religious conservatives have been adjusting to their new lack of access to the political power structure. >> religious conservatives are not completely shut out, because of course they still do have some republican and even some conservative democratic office holders that pay attention to them. but really, the access belongs to the other side, to the progressive religious activists, whether they're protestants or catholics or jews, who very much took advantage of the change in party control in washington. >> reporter: and are these moderate and liberal religious activists having an influence? are they making an impact on policy? >> influence is always a difficult thing to judge while