The sociologist Peter Berger once quipped that if Swedes are the world’s least religious people, and Indians the world’s most religious people, then America is a nation of Indians governed by Swedes. But the top Swedes, of either party, have to at least pretend to be Indians, and to be Indians in the style of the Indians. So presidential candidates provide an ideal funhouse mirror image of the state of American religion as it is actually lived.

This cycle, the recently-announced candidate Marco Rubio also provides an interesting lens through which to look at how Christianity is changing in America. Rubio is a Catholic. But Rubio is also a Catholic who dabbled in Mormonism. And Rubio is a Catholic who dabbled in Mormonism who attends Southern Baptist services with his wife. 

This reflects the increasingly consumerist, do-it-yourself aspect of American religion. Contrary to the hopes or fears (depending on where you stand) that greeted the New Atheism publishing phenomenon, Americans are as religious as ever—more Americans than in the 1950s, for example, report having had an experience of the divine, or believing in an afterlife.