Our politicians are more devout than ever -- so it's time we started taking their faith seriously

We don’t do God. Everyone knows that. Even though Alistair Campbell’s oft-quoted aphorism was never intended to be some secular edict from on high – he was actually just closing down an interview with Tony Blair rather than making a statement of principle – it has become one. Plural, secular, Western politics is, or should be, a God-free zone.

It isn’t. Indeed, one of the most striking trends of the last generation or so is how many Christian politicians have risen to the top of the political tree. Take the UK: in the 35 years after the Second World War, the country only really had one personally devout Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan. In the next 35, it had three, or four, or even five: Thatcher, Blair, Theresa May, possibly Brown, maybe even Cameron.