But consider that nobody really bought it when Donald Trump claimed to be a man of deep faith (asked what God means to him, he talked about what a great deal he made in buying a beautiful golf course, I kid you not) — but it didn’t hurt him in the primary polls. Yes, there are many Republican voters who think they absolutely must vote for someone who shares their faith, but there are plenty of others who’ll overlook that question for someone who’s a compelling enough personality. And Republicans ended up voting for Mitt Romney, despite the widespread belief among evangelicals that Mormonism is a cult. That’s not to mention the fact that while in 2012, no fewer than three candidates (Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum) said that God had personally told them to run for president, no one that I’ve heard has made that claim this year. Maybe it’s because getting such an instruction seems to mean, “I want you to run so your humiliating loss may be a lesson to others.”
MORE PERSPECTIVES
MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
Catholic nuns’ slam-dunk case against ObamaCare
JAMES POULOS
Why America’s military-industrial complex thinks Obama failed
There is one other secular candidate running for president, at least measured by the time he spends in services: Bernie Sanders. While Sanders hasn’t talked much about his Jewishness, what he has said suggests that for him, like for many American Jews, Judaism is much more a cultural identity than a set of shared beliefs about God…
So who knows, perhaps within a few election cycles we’ll see someone who doesn’t claim any religious faith make a serious run for the White House. It might be a conservative Republican, in an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China kind of development. Or it might be that the “nones,” already an overwhelmingly Democratic group, will continue to grow in numbers and see one of their own lead the party. But it could happen sooner than you might think.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member