Hagan gets biblical over Dole’s atheist ad

Democratic challenger Kay Hagan is confronting Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) for questioning Hagan's faith in what is shaping up to be among the nastiest campaigns this cycle. 

Hagan appeared in a new television advertisement that began airing Thursday to respond to Dole’s latest attack ad linking Hagan with an atheist group.

{mosads}Hagan, a Presbyterian who taught Sunday school, called the ad “offensive” and closed with a not-so-subtle dig that suggests Dole broke one of the Ten Commandments.

"Elizabeth Dole's attacks on my Christian faith are offensive," Hagan says, adding her campaign is about jobs and the economy instead of "bearing false witness against fellow Christians."

The Ninth Commandment prohibits bearing false witness against a neighbor.

Dole spokesman Daniel McLagan dismissed Hagan’s response as “fairly hysterical.” He noted that everything in Dole’s ad is true.

“It's sad that she has stooped that kind of name-calling,” he said.

Dole’s ad, released Tuesday afternoon, highlights a Hagan fundraiser hosted by an adviser to the Godless Americans political action committee. The political spot  shows that the Godless Americans support removing the words "In God We Trust" from money and the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. It ends with an unidentified female voice saying, “There is no God!”

Hagan said the Dole campaign faked her voice to make voters think that she doesn’t believe in God.

“Well, I believe in God,” Hagan says in the spot. “I taught Sunday school. My faith guides my life, and Sen. Dole knows it.”

Hagan's campaign has noted that her family has attended the same Presbyterian church for more than a century.

Dole’s ad has also come under scrutiny from local newspapers. The Charlotte Observer wrote in an editorial Thursday that it was the “modern-day version” of Sen. Jesse Helms’s (R-N.C.) “white hands” ad, which critics have condemned as a ploy to drum up racist fears about his 1990 Democratic opponent. The Greensboro News & Record wrote that Dole’s ad is “worse than dishonest” and called on her to pull it from the air.

Hagan is leading Dole 46.6 percent to 42.9 percent in the latest Pollster.com trend line of all polls taken of their Senate race.