Kasich’s Christianity lacks the polish of most Republican presidential contenders. He doesn’t have the on-stage swagger and gravitas of televangelist attaché Mike Huckabee, or Jeb Bush’s well-strategized and focus-group-tested nods to faith and family. Faith is as confusing and difficult for Kasich as it is for anyone: “I’ve wrestled with it all, and the more I wrestle the stronger I get. The more I wrestle the stronger the foundation I’m trying to build my house upon,” Kasich told supporters at last year’s Faith and Freedom Coalition. “I don’t believe in shoving my views down anybody’s throat. … C.S. Lewis, in a book I was reading last night, said he can’t even live up to his own principles, and I don’t either. I’m a failed guy.” He went on to explain that his faith was challenged by the death of both his parents in a car crash. Kasich also boldly commented on the way faith normally factors into politics, a convenience Christian voters are not unaware of. “Like many, many young people, the Lord became a rabbit’s foot for me: Pull it out on test day, pull it out on Election Day. ‘Come on Lord I got the rabbit’s foot,’” Kasich said.

But if that was his past, it doesn’t have much in common with his present approach to politics. Kasich is by no means a leftist, and he himself says he doesn’t crack open the Bible every time a bill comes across his desk. Nonetheless, when listening to him speak or watching him defend the areas of departure between himself and other Republicans, it is usually easy to trace the lines of Kasich’s religious reasoning. Actions, after all, speak louder than words: Just last week, Kasich signed into a law a bill that will make a medication essential to reversing the effects of opioid overdoses available over the counter. It’s a humane step to take in Ohio’s struggle with widespread drug abuse, and it is certainly easy to imagine less gentle measures. But Kasich, at least for the time being, seems content to start up church- and community-based anti-drug awareness campaigns, and to make treatment easier to receive. As in much of his policy, Kasich is curious for a Republican, but makes a lot of sense as a Christian. Whether that strong strand of Christian reasoning will get him to the White House is another story entirely.