“We are seeing a quiet revolution in the religious make-up of our political leadership class”

Perhaps ethnicity and religious traditions mattered less to voters than we realized. The first — and greatest — Republican president rarely went to church at all. But few doubted Abe Lincoln’s faith.

Today, the GOP is on the verge of officially nominating a member of the LDS Church, notwithstanding the fact that in Lincoln’s day — on the grounds of polygamy — Mormons were a tangible Republican target.

Other than a handful of insightful conservatives, few people seem to have thought about Romney’s candidacy in the context of growing Republican religious diversity. One of them was journalist Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller, who raised it even before the choice of Paul Ryan.

Another is Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

“The diversity of American elites has been expanding for several decades now,” Cromartie said this week. “Ironically, the one group elites fear most, evangelical Protestants, are still not represented — although their numbers are large — in proportion to all the others.”