Among Democratic faith advisers, this was seen as the perfect encapsulation of her campaign’s fatal mistake. Despite her personal history as a lifelong, devout Methodist, Clinton did not center her faith in her presidential bid. If “Hillary had a sophisticated, state-of-the-art outreach team on the ground in [Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania], there were 40,000 persuadable voters who were looking for a reason not to vote for Trump from a values and religious standpoint,” says Shaun Casey, the director of Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and a former Obama administration official. “They never were approached in that fashion.” Faith-outreach efforts could make the difference in crowded early primaries, in which candidates are desperate to differentiate themselves, Casey says, and in the general election, when important swing states could be tipped by turnout from religious Hispanics or middle-of-the-road white Christians who might be wooed away from Trump.

Some of the Democratic candidates seem to see religion as an obstacle rather than an advantage, or at least peripheral to a winning campaign strategy. As my colleague Peter Beinart recently wrote, former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have spoken about religion as a source of division, especially in the face of rising bigotry, and have ditched “God bless America!” niceties. For the most part, even the more faith-friendly candidates have shared aspects of their faith only when asked in interviews. “It’s not been organic,” Wear says. “Right now, most of the faith outreach has been done by CNN.”