Reactions to President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice Souter on the Supreme Court are still rolling in.

Here are some highlights on issues related to the religious community:

The Washington Post reports that while Sotomayor "never forgot her modest background, and always identified with the disadvantaged" she is hard to pinpoint ideologically, and reaches her conclusions "through reason and carefully researched arguments."

A former colleague describes her:

"Liberal without being a flaming type of do-gooder or anything of the sort. To call her a centrist would not be accurate. To call her wild-eyed would also not be accurate. She is far too rational, far too interested in the underlying facts."

The Orthodox Union finds Sotomayor's stance on religious liberty "very encouraging" specifically citing her decisions in Flamer v. City of White Plains, in which she ruled in favor of a rabbi seeking to display a menorah in a city park, and her dissenting opinion in Hankins v. Lyght, which dealt with the Methodist church's retirement policy for its ministers:

She wrote: "Federal court entanglement in matters as fundamental as a religious institution's selection or dismissal of its spiritual leaders risks an unconstitutional 'trespass on the most spiritually intimate grounds of a religious community's existence." Given those concerns, she concluded that the federal statute was best read "not [to] apply to employment suits brought against religious institutions by their spiritual leaders."

Stephen Waldman notes her deliberative record on the abortion issue and points out that Americans United for Life issued a statement opposing her but did not base their opposition on specific case history.

David Brody at CBN does not think culture wars over abortion will derail Sotomayor.

Sotomayor is Catholic and attended Catholic schools. If confirmed, she will be the 6th Catholic on the Supreme Court. However, her faith is not likely to be a big part of the confirmation process. Catholics (in the US at large and on the Supreme Court in particular) are ideologically diverse. Catholic justices are generally not expected to make decisions based on their religious beliefs. Even conservatives like Scalia say they practice that principle:

"There is no such thing as a 'Catholic judge.' The bottom line is that the Catholic faith seems to me to have little effect on my work as a judge...Just as there is no 'Catholic' way to cook a hamburger, I am hard pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic."

We'll have more reactions and information as they come out.